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GEORGE WASHINGTON. 
[Engvaved by G, Kruell from the painting by Gilbert Stnart in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.] 



A LARGER HISTORY 



OF THE 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



TO THE CLOSE OF 



PRESIDENT JACKSON'S ADMINISTRATION 



BY 

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

AUTHOR OF 

"YOUNG folks' history OF THE UNITED STATES" 



ILLUSTRATED BY MAPS, PLANS, PORTRAITS, AND OTHER ENGRAVINGS 



NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 

1886 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1882, by 

HARPER & BROTHERS, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at WashiDgton. 



Copyright, 1885, by Harper & Brothers. 



All rij^his reserved. 



HIZ 



PREFACE. 



IT is said by Mr. Conway that Carlyle could never quite 
forgive Shakespeare for not having written a history of 
England ; and it would seem that every author, great or small, 
should do his share, first or last, towards elucidating his own 
country's annals, or at least making them attractive. Ever 
since my own humble contribution of this kind in the " Young 
Folks' History of the United States," I have been repeatedly 
urged by readers, and even by parents and teachers, to tell the 
story of the nation over again upon a much larger scale, but 
on the same general principles. This has now been done, after 
waiting long enough to make sure of a wholly fresh treatment 
instead of a mere amplification. 

If the smaller book has met the popular demand, or if this 
work is destined to excite any similar interest, it grows mainly 
out of one fact — that the theme appears, and has always ap- 
peared to me more important, more varied, more picturesque, 
and more absorbingly interesting than any historic subject 
offered by the world beside. I know that in this I seem to 
oppose myself to some of the most cultivated minds among my 
fellow-countrymen. Hawthorne called American history only a 
scene of " commonplace prosperity ;" Lowell pronounced the 
details of our early annals to be " essentially dry and unpoetic." 
Yet Hawthorne by his prose and Lowell by his poetry have 



vi PREFACE. 

done much toward refuting their own charges; and it seems to 
me, at any rate, that an American author can render no better 
service than to take up just those despised details and see, by 
a fair test, whether any nation has better material to offer. 
Our profounder historical students are now adding enormous- 
ly to the wealth of this kind of knowledge ; and it is the light- 
er but not always easier task of the literary man to reduce 
these accumulations into compact shape, select what is most 
characteristic, and make the result readable. If I have failed 
in doing this, the defect is not in my subject-matter but in my 
skill. 

My thanks are especially due, among those learned masters 
of whom I have spoken, to my near neighbors and ever kind 
friends, Justin Winsor and Charles Deane ; and also to a young 
kinsman who is already following in their laborious footsteps — 
Dr. Edward Channing, of Harvard University. I owe thanks 
to the Century Company for the liberty of reprinting, with the 
original illustrations, a chapter of this work which was first 
published in their magazine, I am also greatly indebted for 
the opportunity of photographing valuable portaits to Dr. John 
C. Warren and Mrs. Gardner Brewer, of Boston ; to Winslow 
Warren, Esq., of Dedham, Mass. ; to Hon. William C. Endicott, 
of Salem, Mass. ; to Mrs. G. H. Pendleton, of Cincinnati ; to 
J. G. Rosengarten, Esq., of Philadelphia ; to Mrs. Fisher, of Al- 
verthorpe, Germantown, Pa.; to J. R. Bryan, Esq., of Fredericks- 
burgh, Va. ; and to the city authorities of Boston. To my pub- 
lishers I am indebted for most of the illustrations of the vol- 
ume, and especially for what is, if I mistake not, by far the 
finest series of portraits of statesmen yet seen in any Ameri- 
can book. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAP. PAGE 

I. THE FIRST AMERICANS i 

II. THE VISIT OF THE VIKINGS 27 

III. THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS 52 

IV. THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN 75 

V. THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS 108 

VI. ''AN ENGLISH NATION" 137 

VII. THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 169 

VIII. THE SECOND GENERATION OF ENGLISHMEN IN 

AMERICA 192 

IX. THE BRITISH YOKE 216 

X. THE DAWNING OF INDEPENDENCE 241 

XI. THE GREAT DECLARATION 265 

XII. THE BIRTH OF A NATION 283 

XIII. OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE 309 

XIV. THE EARLY AMERICAN PRESIDENTS 333 

XV. THE SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 360 

XVI. THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING 381 

XVII. THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH 406 

XVIII. ''OLD HICKORY" 43^ 

INDEX 457 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE 

George Washington Fro7itispiece 

Ruins of the Pueblo Pintado 2 

Plan of the Pueblo Pintado 3 

Restoration of the Pueblo Hungo Pavie 5 

Plan of Hungo Pavie 6 

The North Pueblo of Taos 8 

Ruined Pueblo and Citadel 9 

HODENOSOTE, OR LONG HoUSE OF THE IrOQUOIS 12 

Plan of Iroquois House 12 

Plan of Nechecolee House 12 

Fortified Village of Mound-builders, Ground-plan 14 

Fortified Mandan Village 15 

Fortified Onondaga Village 16 

Morgan's High Bank Pueblo 17 

Diego de Landa's Maya Alphabet 18 

Colossal Statue of Chaac-mol 20 

Sculptured Head of Yucatan 21 

Incense-burners from Yucatan 22 

Female Face from Topila 23 

Indian Vase Found in Vermont 25 

Viking's War Ship, Engraved on Rock in Norway 27 

Norse Boat Unearthed at Sandefjord 32 

Old Norse Ruins in Greenland -37 

The Old Mill at Newport, R. 1 43 

Stone Windmill at Chesterton 44 

The Dighton Rock 45 

The Mount Hope Bay Inscription 46 

Hieroglyphics on Rock in New Mexico 46 

Hieroglyphics on Inscription Rock, New Mexico . 47 



X ILL US TRA TIONS. 

PAGE 

North Atlantic, by the Icelander Sigurd Stephanius, in 1570. . 50 

Christopher Columbus 53 

The Vision of Columbus - • • 57 

The Landing at Guanahani 61 

Da Vinci's Mappemonde 66 

A Chart of the Sixteenth Century 67 

Vasco Nunez de Balboa 68 

Ponce de Leon 71 

Sebastian Cabot, by Holbein 77 

Map of Sebastian Cabot 79 

Sir John Hawkins, Kt 86 

The Hawkins Arms 88 

Defeat of the British under Sir John Hawkins at San Juan de 

Ulloa 89 

Sir Francis Drake 91 

"Thomas Moon began to lay about him with his Sword" ... 93 
Part of Map of Drake's Voyages, Published by J. Hondius in Hol- 
land towards the close of the Sixteenth Century .... 95 

Drake's Attack on San Domingo 99 

Thomas Cavendish 102 

Capture of the "Santa Anna," Spanish Flag -ship, by Caven- 
dish 103 

Sir Walter Raleigh 105 

Jacques Cartier 11 1 

Jacques Cartier setting up a Cross at Gaspe 113 

The Landing of Jean Ribaut 115 

Indian Dwelling and Canoe 117 

Indians Decorating Ribaut's Pillar 118 

Dominique de Gourgues Avenging the Murder of the Huguenot 

Colony . 120 

"He brought both Catholic Priests and Huguenot Ministers, who 

Disputed heartily on the way" 121 

Samuel de Champlain 127 

Champlain's Fortified Residence at Quebec 130 

"He rested his Musket" 132 

Attack on an Iroquois Fort 134 

Captain John Smith 142 

Powhatan 144 

Map of the New England Coast, from Captain John Smith's " His- 
TORiE OF Virginia" .145 



ILLUSTRATIONS. Xl 

PAGE 

Map of Jamestown Settlement, from Captain John Smith's " His- 

TORiE of Virginia" 148 

Arrival of the Young Women at Jamestown 150 

Visit of Pilgrims to the Shore 159 

John Endicott 161 

John Winthrop 163 

Cecil Calvert, Second Lord Baltimore 166 

Death of King Philip 179 

Fac-simile from MS. of Father Rasle's Abenaki Glossary .... 186 

Sir William Pepperrell 188 

Louis Joseph Montcalm 190 

James Wolfe 191 

Cotton Mather 196 

A Quaker Exhorter in New England 205 

Samuel Sewall 208 

Arresting a Witch 209 

Peter Stuyvesant Tearing the Letter Demanding the Surrender 

OF New York 212 

Governor Andros and the Boston People 221 

James Otis 223 

General Oglethorpe, Founder of Georgia 226 

Lord Chatham 228 

The "Boston Massacre" 230 

Burning of the "Gaspee" 231 

Rev. Ezra Stiles 232 

Patrick Henry 233 

An Out-of-door Tea-party in Colonial New England 236 

Paul Revere 243 

Lexington Green. — "If they want a War, let it begin here" . . 246 

Dr. Joseph Warren 247 

General William Heath 248 

Fac-simile of Warren's Address 250 

Samuel Adams 255 

Sergeant Jasper at the Battle of Fort Moultrie 261 

Trumbull's "Signing of the Declaration" 266 

John Dickinson 270 

House in whIch Jefferson wrote the Declaration, corner of Mar- 
ket AND Seventh Streets, Philadelphia 274 

View of Independence Hall, through the Square 276 

Table and Chairs used at the Signing of the Declaration . . . 278 



xi i ILL US TRA TIONS. 

PAGE 

Tearing Down the King's Arms from above the Door in the Cham- 
ber OF the Supreme Court Room in Independence Hall, July 8, 

1776 280 

Garden-house, Owned by Dr, Enoch Edwards, where Jefferson and 

others Celebrated the Passage of the Declaration 281 

The French Officers at Newport 290 

General Sir Guy Carleton 292 

Elbridge Gerry , . . . 299 

Fisher Ames 301 

Shays's Mob in Possession of a Court-house 303 

The Inauguration of Washington 307 

At Mrs. Washington's Reception 315 

Alexander Hamilton 317 

Mrs. Bingham 323 

Mrs. Theodore Sedgwick 325 

Count Fersen .■ 334 

John Adams 337 

Abigail Adams 341 

Thomas Jefferson 345 

Washington in 1800 351 

Mercy Warren 353 

Aaron Burr 357 

James Madison 363 

Impressment of American Seamen 367 

Francis Scott Key 378 

James Monroe 385 

Henry Clay 391 

John Randolph 397 

Rufus King 401 

John Quincy Adams 409 

Map showing the Movement of the Centre of Population West- 
ward on the Thirty-ninth Parallel 416 

John C. Calhoun 425 

Andrew Jackson 435 

Daniel Webster 445 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



I. 

THE FIRST AMERICANS. 

IT happened to the writer more than once, during the late 
civil war, to sail up some great Southern river that was 
to. all appearance unfurrowed by the keel of man. If it was 
not the entrance to a newly discovered continent, it might as 
well have been. No light -house threw its hospitable gleam 
across the dangerous bar, no floating buoys marked the in- 
tricacies of the channel ; the lights had been extinguished, the 
buoys removed, and the whole coast seemed to have gone 
back hundreds of years in time, reverting to its primeval and 
unexplored condition. There was commonly no sound except 
the light plash of waves or the ominous roll of heavy surf. 
Once only, I remember, when at anchor in a dense fog off 
St. Simon's Island, in Georgia, I heard a low continuous noise 
from the unseen distance, more wild and desolate than any- 
thing else in my memory can parallel. It came from within 
the vast girdle of mist, and seemed as if it might be the cry 
of lost souls out of some Inferno of Dante ; yet it was but 
the sound of innumerable sea-fowl at the entrance of the outer 
bay. Amid such experiences I was for the first time enabled 
to picture to myself the American Continent as its first Euro- 
pean visitor saw it. 



2 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Lonely as the land may have seemed, those early voyagers 
always came upon the traces, ere long, of human occupants. 
Who were those men and women, what was their origin, what 







o ^ ^ 



RUINS OF THE PUEBLO PINTADO. 



their mode of life ? Every one who explores the mounds of the 
Ohio Valley, or gazes on the ruins of Yucatan, or looks into 
the wondrous narratives of the Spanish conquerors, must ask 
himself this question. Until within a few years there has 
seemed no answer to it. Facts have come in faster and faster, 
and every new fact has made the puzzle seem more hopeless, 
so long as no one could offer the solution. These various pre- 
historic races, so widely sundered, threw no light upon each 
other ; they only deepened each other's darkness. Indians, 
Aztecs, Mayas, Mound -builders, seemed to have no common 
origin, no visible analogy of life or habits. The most skilful 
student was hardly in advance of the least skilful as to any 
real comprehension of the facts ; nor could this possibly be 
otherwise, so long as the clew to the labyrinth was not found. 
It is only some thirty years since it may be said to have 
been discovered ; only some eight or ten years since it has 



THE FIRST AMERICANS. 3 

been resolutely and persistently used. Let us see what results 
it has already yielded. 

When in 1852 Lieutenant J. H. Simpson, of the United 
States army, gave to the world the first detailed description of 
the vast ruined pueblos of New Mexico, and of the other pueb- 
los still occupied, he did not know that he was providing the 
means for rewriting all the picturesque tales of the early con- 
querors. All their legends of cisatlantic emperors and em- 



\ 



400 YARDS TO THE 
BED OF THE CHACO 



■■««%j 



mA 



Do 



DD 






Pueblo Pixtado, 

CUaco Cauou, 
N.M. 

10 go 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 10 
SCALE OF 100 FEET 



OUTER WALLS ^^■ 

,MUOH BROKEN DOWN 1k 



^N^,>>, 



INSIDE OF THIS COURT FULL OF 

DEPRESSIONS, AS IF A NUMBER OF 

UNDER-GROUND ROOMS ONCE EXISTED 



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nan 
n nrn 



PLAN OF THE PUEBLO PINTADO. 



pires were to be read anew in the light of that one discovery. 
These romances had been told in good faith, or something as 
near it as the narrator knew, and the tales had passed from 



4 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

one to another, each building on what his predecessor had laid 
down. The accounts were accepted with little critical revision 
by modern writers ; they filled the attractive pages of Prescott ; 
even Hubert Bancroft did not greatly modify them; but the 
unshrinking light of a new theory was to raise questions as to 
them all. And with them were to be linked also Stephens's 
dreams of vast cities, once occupied by an immense popula- 
tion, and now remaining only as unexplored ruins amid the 
forests of Central America. The facts he saw were confirmed, 
but his impressions must be tested by a wholly new interpre- 
tation. And, after all, these vaj-ious wonders were only to be 
exchanged for new marvels, as interesting as the old ones, and 
more intelligible and coherent. 

From the publication of Lewis H. Morgan's remarkable es- 
say, entitled " Montezuma's Dinner," in the North American 
Review for April, 1876, the new interpretation took a definite 
form. The vast accumulation of facts in regard to the early 
American races then began to be classified and simplified ; and 
with whatever difference of opinion as to details, the general 
opinion of scholars now inclines to the view which, when Mor- 
gan first urged it, was called startling and incredible. That 
view is still a theory, as Darwin's " origin of species " is still a 
theory; but Morgan's speculations, like Darwin's, have begun 
a new era for the science to which they relate. He holds that 
there never was a prehistoric American civilization, properly 
^o called, but only an advanced and wonderfully skilful barbar- 
ism, or semi-civilization at the utmost. The aboriginal races, 
except perhaps the Eskimo, were essentially one in their social 
structure, he thinks, however varying in development. In his 
view there never was an Aztec or Maya empire, but only a 
league of free tribes, appointing their own chiefs, and" accept- 
ing the same general modes of organization, based on consan- 
guinity, that have prevailed among all the more advanced fam- 
ilies of North American Indians. Montezuma was not an 



THE FIRST AMERICANS. 



5 



emperor, and had no palace, but he Hved in the great communal 
dwelling of his tribe, where he was recognized and served as 
head. The forests of Yucatan held no vast cities — cities whose 
palaces remain, while the humble dwellings of the poor have 
perished — but only pueblo towns, in whose great communal 
structures the rich and the poor alike dwelt. There are 
questions enough left unsolved in American archeeology, no 
doubt, but the solution of this part of the problem has now 



^ a *: 







RESTORATION OF THE PUEBLO HUNGO PAVIE. 



been proposed in intelligible terms, at least ; and it has been 
rapidly followed up by the accurate researches of Morgan and 
Putnam and Bandelier. 

I have said that all this new view of the problem dates 
from our knowledge of the Pueblo or Village Indians of Ne\^i^ 
Mexico. What is a pueblo '^. It is an Indian town, of organ- 
ization and aspect so peculiar that it can best be explained by 
minute descriptions. Let us begin with the older examples, 
now in ruins. Mr. Bandelier has lately examined for the 
American Archaeological Institute a ruined building at Pecos, 
in New Mexico, which he claims to be the largest aboriginal 
structure of stone within the limits of the United States. It 
has a circuit of 1480 feet, is five stories high, and once in- 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



eluded by calculation 500 separate rooms. This is simply a 
ruined pueblo. This composite dwelling once sheltered the 
inhabitants of a whole Indian town. Pueblo Bonito, on the 
Rio Chacos, described by Lieutenant Simpson, and more late- 
ly by Dr. W. H. Jackson, is 1716 feet in circuit; it included 
641 rooms, and could have housed, it is estimated, 3000 In- 
dians. A stone pueblo on the Animas River, lately visited 
and described by Mr. L. H. Morgan, had more than 400 
rooms — and such instances could easily be multiplied. As a 
rule, each of these buildings constituted a village — a single 
vast house built on three sides of a court. The stories rose 
in successive terraces, each narrower than the one beneath, 
and each approachable only by ladders, there being no sign of 
any internal means of ascent from story to story. The outer 
walls were built usually of thin slabs of gray sandstone, laid 

with the greatest precision 
and accuracy, often with no 
signs of mortar, the intervals 
""."^j being filled with stones of 
the minutest thinness, so that 
the whole ruin appears in 
the distance, according to 
Simpson, " like a magnifi- 
cent piece of mosaic -work." 
These pueblos were practi- 
cally impregnable to all un- 
civilized warfare, and they differ only in material, not in the 
essentials of their structure, from the adobe pueblos occupied 
by the Village Indians of to-day. 

The first impression made by the adobe pueblos now inhab- 
ited is quite different from that produced by these great stone 
structures, yet the internal arrangement is almost precisely the 
same. As you cross, for instance, the green meadows of the 
Rio Grande, you see rising abruptly before you, like a colossal 




*^ 






^T-^ 



1 



:jq 



PLAN OF HUNGO PAVIE. 



THE FIRST AMERICANS. 7 

ant-hill, a great drab mound, with broken lines that suggest 
roofs at the top. As you draw nearer, you see before you solid 
walls or banks of the same drab hue, perforated here and there 
by small openings. These walls are in tiers — tiers of terraces 
— each spreading out flat at the top, and a few feet wide, with 
a higher one behind it, and another behind that, until in some 
cases they are five stories high. Strips of what seems lattice- 
work stand on these terraces, slanted, tilted, propped irregularly 
here and there ; they also are of a drab color, " as if walls, roofs, 
ladders, all had been run, wet mud, into a fretted mould, baked, 
and turned out like some freaky confectioner's device made of 
opaque, light brown cough candy." At intervals upon these 
terraces, or on the ground near the base of the walls, there 
stand low oval mounds of the same baked drab mud, shaped 
like the half of an egg-shell, with an aperture left in the small 
end. Then there are on the roof, lifted a few feet above them, 
little thatches of brush, ragged and unfinished, like the first 
rough platform of twigs and mud which the robin constructs 
for her nest. Closer inspection shows that the tiers and ter- 
races are the stories and roofs of the houses; the holes are 
doors and windows opening into rooms under the terraced 
roofs; the strips of lattice -work are ladders, these being the 
only means of going from one terrace to another; the little 
oval mounds are ovens; and the bits of thatch are arbors on 
the roofs. In the pueblo of San Juan — as recently portrayed 
by Mrs. Helen Jackson, of whose graphic description the above 
is but an abstract— there are four or five of these large terraced 
buildings, with a small open plaza or court between. When 
this lady visited the scene, upon a festal day, this plaza was 
filled with Indians and Mexicans, and the terraces were all 
covered with them, dressed for the most part in blankets of 
the gayest colors, relieved against the drab adobe walls or 
against a brilliant blue sky. This group of strange structures, 
thus tenanted and thus adorned, is an inhabited pueblo. 



8 - HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Sometimes, as at Taos, the separate dwellings or cells of the 
building are so crowded together as to resemble, in the words 
of Bandelier, " an extraordinarily large honey-comb." The same 




THE NORTH PUEBLO OF TAOS. 



is the case with that of Zuni, both these pueblos being now in- 
habited, and the latter, which is the larger, giving shelter to fif- 
teen hundred Indians. Others again, like that of Acoma, are so 
protected by their situation that this close aggregation of cells 
is not necessary ; and the little tenements are simply placed 
side by side like houses in a block, the whole being perched on 
a cliff three hundred and fifty feet high, accessible only by a 
single row of steps cut in the rock. Sometimes the whole 
structure is in a cleft of a rock, yet even there it is essentially 
a pueblo, with the same terraces and the same ladders, so far as 
there is room. Sometimes w^e find the main pueblo, ruined or 
inhabited, beneath the cliff, and the citadel of refuge in a posi- 
tion almost inaccessible among the rocks above. Many of these 
masses of building are now occupied, more are in ruins. Each 
shelters, or may have sheltered, hundreds of inhabitants, and 



THE FIRST AMERICANS. g 

the existing Village Indians probably represent for us not 
merely the race, but the mode of living of those who built 
every one of these great structures. If we wish to know what 
was the America which Cortez invaded, we must look for it 
in the light of these recent investigations. 













RUINED PUEBLO AND CITADEL. 



10 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

No trace now remains of the so-called city of Mexico, as 
Cortez saw it; but we know, in a vague way, how it compared 
with the pueblos that still exist. The clew to a comparison is 
as follows : There prevailed in the sixteenth century a legend 
that seven bishops had once sailed west fiom Portugal, and 
founded seven cities in America. Cabeza de Vaca, after his 
wanderings in the interior of America in 1536, brought back an 
account of large and semi -civilized communities dwelling in 
palaces ; and it was thought that these might be identified with 
the cities founded by the bishops. They were seen again by 
Fray Marco de Niza in 1539, and by Coronado in 1540, and 
were by them mentioned as " the seven cities of Cibola." Coro- 
nado fully describes the " great houses of stone," " with ladders 
instead of stairs," thus identifying them unmistakably with the 
still existing pueblos. Whether they were the seven pueblos 
of the Zufiis, or those of the Moquis in Arizona, is as yet un- 
settled ; but it is pretty certain that they were identical with 
the one or the other; and as Fray Marco declared them to be 
in his day "more considerable than Mexico," we have some- 
thing like a standard of comparison. Such great communal 
houses, which could shelter a whole Spanish army within their 
walls, could seem nothing else than palaces to those wholly 
unused to the social organization which they represented. The 
explorers reasoned, just as students reasoned for three cen- 
turies longer, that structures so vast could only have been 
erected by despotism. They saw an empire where there was 
no empire ; they supposed themselves in presence of a feu- 
dalism like their own ; all their descriptions were cast in the 
mould of this feudalism, and the mould remained unbroken 
until the civilized world, within thirty years, rediscovered the 
pueblos. 

Again, so long as the Pueblo Indians were unknown to us, 
there appeared an impassable gap between the roving Indians 
of the North and the more advanced race that Cortez con- 



THE FIRST AMERICANS. 1 1 

quered. Yet writers had long since pointed out the seeming 
extravagance of the Spanish descriptions, the exaggeration of 
their statistics. In the celebrated Spanish narrative of Monte- 
zuma's banquet, Bernal Diaz, writing thirty years after the 
event, describes four women as bringing water to their chief — 
an occurrence not at all improbable. In the account by Her- 
rera, written still later, the four have increased to twenty. Ac- 
cording to Diaz, Montezuma had 200 of his nobility on guard 
in the palace ; Cortez expands them to 600, and Herrera to 
3000. Zuazo, describing the pueblo or town of Mexico in 1521, 
attributed to it 60,000 inhabitants, and the " anonymous con- 
queror" who was with Cortez wrote the same. This estimate 
Morgan believes to have been twice too large ; but Gomara 
and Peter Martyr transformed the inhabitants into houses — 
the estimate which Prescott follows — while Torquemada, cited 
by Clavigero, goes still further, and writes 120,000 houses. 
Supposing that, as seems probable, the Mexican houses were 
of the communal type, holding fifty or a hundred persons each, 
we have an original population of perhaps 30,000 swollen to 
6,000,000. These facts illustrate the extravagances of state- 
ment to which the study of the New Mexican pueblos has put 
an end. This study has led us to abate much of the exaggera- 
tion with which the ancient Mexican society has been treated, 
and on the other hand to do justice to the more advanced 
among the tribes of Northern Indians. The consequence is 
that the two types appear less unlike each other than was 
formerly supposed. 

Let us compare the habits of the Pueblo Indians with those 
of more northern tribes. Lewis and Clarke thus describe a 
village of the Chopunish, or Nez Perces, on the Columbia 
River : 

" The village of Tunnachemootoolt is in fact only a single 
house 150 feet long, built after the Chopunish fashion with 
sticks, straw, and dried grass. It contains twenty-four fires, 



12 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 





''7^^^^^^^-p^^:^^:^'i^'-m^.h\WM>e^-- 



HODENOSOTE, OR LONG HOUSE OF THE 
IROQUOIS. 



about double that number of families, and might perhaps mus- 
ter one hundred fighting men." 

This represents a communal household of nearly five hun- 
dred people, and another great house of the same race (Neche- 

colees) was still larger, being 
226 feet in length. The 
houses of the Iroquois were 
100 feet long. The Creeks, 
the Mandans, the Sacs, the 
Mohaves, and other tribes 
lived in a similar communal 
way, several related families 
in each house, living and eat- 
ing in common. All these 
built their houses of perisha- 
ble materials ; some arranged 
them for defence, others did not, but all the structures bear 
a certain analogy to each other, and even, when carefully con- 
sidered, to the pueblos of New Mexico. 

Compare, for instance, a ground -plan of one of the Cho- 
punish houses among the Nechecolees with that of an Iroquois 
house and with a New Mexican pueblo, and one is struck with 
the resemblance. All these houses seem obviously adapted 
to a communal life, and 
traces of this practice, vary- I I I I I I I 1 1 I | I I 

inor in different places, come r :,?,:, 1 1 i 1 1 1 

I I I I I I II I 
constantly before us. The — — — — %Ft. 

Pueblo Indians hold their 

lands in common. The 

traveller Stephens saw near 

the ruins of Uxmal the food 

of a hundred laboring -men 

prepared at one hut, and 

each family sending for its own portion — "a procession of 



PLAN OF IROQUOIS HOUSE. 



iFt. 



PLAN OF NECHECOLEE HOUSE. 



THE FIRST AMERICANS. 1 3 

women and children, each carrying a smoking bowl of hot 
broth, all coming down the same path, and dispersing among 
the huts." But this description might easily be paralleled 
among Northern tribes. I will not dwell on the complex laws 
of descent and relationship, which are so elaborately described 
by Morgan in his " Ancient Society," and which appear to 
have prevailed among all the aboriginal clans. The essential 
result of all these various observations is this, that whatever 
degree of barbarism or semi-civilization was attained by any of 
the early American races, it was everywhere based on similar 
ways of living; it never resembled feudalism, but came much 
nearer to communism ; it was the condition of a people sub- 
stantially free, whose labor was voluntary, and whose chiefs 
were of their own choosing. After the most laborious inves- 
tigation ever made into the subject, Bandelier — in the twelfth 
report of the Peabody Institute — comes to the conclusion that 
" the social organization and mode of government of the an- 
cient Mexicans was a military democracy, originally based 
upon communism in living." And if this was true even in the 
seemingly powerful and highly organized races of Mexico, it 
was certainly true of every North American tribe. 

If we accept this conclusion — and the present tendency 
of archsologists is to accept it — the greater part of what has 
been written about prehistoric American civilization proves to 
have been too hastily said. Tylor, for instance, after visiting 
the pyramid of Cholula, twenty-five years ago, laid it down as 
an axiom: "Such buildings as these can only be raised under 
peculiar social conditions. The ruler must be a despotic sov- 
ereign, and the mass of the people slaves, W'hose subsistence 
and whose lives are sacrificed without scruple to execute the 
fancies of the monarch, who is not so much the governor as 
the unrestricted owner of the country and the people." He 
did not sufficiently consider that this is the first and easiest 
way to explain all great structures representing vast labor. 



H 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



An American writer finds it necessary to explain even the 
works of the Mound - builders in a similar way. Mr. Foster 
thinks it clear that " the condition of society among the 
Mound -builders was not that of freemen, or, in other words, 



bcctjon of Lar5e ^lound A 




•''•"' Section of Ring Section throuf;h ditch ; 



Jlouni B about 25 ft. from A to B 






rfm 









^o^ 0'Mc ^ ^"^# iJ 




Six low Jfounds ^'.. 



Scale of Feet 

100 200 300 400 SOO COO 700 








FORTIFIED VILLAGE OF MOUND-BUILDERS, GROUND-PLAN. 



that the State possessed absolute power over the lives and 
fortunes of its subjects." But the theory of despotism is no 
more needed to explain a mound or a pueblo than to justify 
the existence of the " Long Houses " of the Iroquois. Even 
the less civilized types of the aboriginal American race had 



THE FIRST AMERICANS. 



15 



learned how to unite in erecting their communal dwellings; 
and surely the higher the grade the greater the power. 

The Mound-builders were formerly regarded as a race so 
remote from the present Indian tribes that there could be noth- 
ing in common between them, yet all recent inquiries tend to 
diminish this distance. Many Indian tribes have built burial 
mounds for their dead. Squier, after the publication of his 
great work on the mounds of the Mississippi Valley, made an 
exploration of those of Western New York, and found, contrary 
to all his preconceived opinions, that these last must have been 
made by the Iroquois. Some of the most elaborate series of 
works, as those at Marietta and Circleville, Ohio, have yielded 
from their deepest recesses articles of European manufacture, 
showing an origin not farther back than the historic period. 
Spanish swords and blue glass beads have been found in the 
mounds of Georgia and Florida. But we need not go so far 
as this to observe the analogies of structure. If we look at 
Professor Putnam's ground- ___ 
plan of a fortified village of 
the Mound-builders on Spring 
Creek, in Tennessee, and com- 
pare it with a similar plan of a 
Mandan village as given by 
Prince Maximilian of Neu- 
wied in 1843, we find their 
arrangement to be essentially 
the same. Each is on a prom- 
ontory protected by the bend 
of a stream ; each is sur- 
rounded by an embankment 
which was once, in all prob- 
ability, surmounted by a palisade. Within this embankment 
were the houses, distributed more irregularly in Putnam's 
plan, more formally and conventionally in that of the Prince 




-H'f-fW' 



FORTIFIED MANDAN VILLAGE. 



i6 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



of Neuwiecl ; in other respects the two villages are almost 
duplicates. To see how they may have looked when occu- 
pied, we may compare them with a representation of a vil- 
lage of the Onondagas, attacked by Champlain in 1615. This 




FORTIFIED ONONDAGA VILLAGE. 



wood -cut is reproduced from one in the "Documentary His- 
tory of New York." It is clear that the Mound-builders had 
much in common with those well-known tribes of Indians the 
Mandans and Onondagas, in their way of placing and pro- 
tecting their houses ; and another comparison has lately been 



THE FIRST AMERICANS. 



17 



made which links their works on the other side with the New 
Mexican pueblos. Mr. Morgan has caused to be prepared 
a conjectural restoration of the High Bank mounds in Ross 
County, Ohio, on the theory that in that instance the houses 
of the inhabitants were "Long Houses" in structure, and were 
built for defensive purposes on top of the embankment. This 
makes the villages into pueblos, and Mr. Morgan therefore 
baptizes the settlement anew with the name of " High Bank 
Pueblo." A mere glance at his restoration will show how 




morgan's high bank pueblo. 



much there was in common between the various types of 
what he calls the aboriginal American race. 

It remains to be considered whether the very highest forms 
of this race — the Aztecs, and the Mayas — were properly to be 
called civilized. It is a matter of definitions ; it depends upon 
what we regard as constituting civilization. Here was a people 
whose development showed strange contradictions. The an- 
cient Mexicans were skilled in horticulture, yet had no beasts 
of burden and no milk, although the ox and buffalo were within 
easy reach. They were a trading people, and used money, but 
had apparently no system of weighing. They used stone tools 
so sharp that Cortez found barbers shaving with razors of ob- 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



sidian in the public squares ; they worked in gold and copper, 
yet they had not learned to make iron tools from the masses of 
that metal which lay, almost pure, in the form of aerolites, in 
their midst. They could observe eclipses and make a calendar, 
yet it is still doubtful whether they had what is properly to be 



Signs. 



Phonetic 

value. 




13- 



14. 



15- 



16. 



Signs. 



Phonetic 
value. 



& 




yj 






19. 



22. 



23- 



24. 



c- Phonetic 

Signs. 

value. 




(ID 



PP 
ku 





• E 



-7- fS" 

DIEGO DE LANDA'S MAYA ALPHABET. 



^# 



called an alphabet. It is certain that they had a method of 
picture-writing, not apparently removed in kind from the sort 
of pictorial mnemonics practised by many tribes of Indians at 
the present day ; and all definite efforts to extract more than 
this from it have thus far failed. Brasseur de Bourbourg be- 



THE FIRST AMERICANS. 1 9 

lieved that he had found in 1863, in the Hbrary of the Royal 
Academy of History at Madrid, a manuscript key to the pho- 
netic alphabet of the Mayas. It was attached to an unpub- 
lished description of Yucatan (" Relacion de las Cosas de Yu- 
catan "), written by Diego de Landa, one of the early Span- 
ish bishops of that country. Amid the general attention of 
" Americanists," Brasseur de Bourbourg tried his skill upon 
one of the few Maya manuscripts, but with little success ; 
and Dr. Valentini, with labored analysis, has lately given his 
reasons for thinking the whole so-called alphabet a Span- 
ish fabrication. The very question of the alphabet remains, 
therefore, still unproved, while Tylor, the highest living au- 
thority on anthropology, considers it essential to the claim of 
civilization that a nation should have a written language. 
Tried by this highest standard, therefore, we cannot yet say 
that either the Aztecs or the Mayas were civilized. 

To sum up the modern theory, the key to the whole abo- 
riginal American society is given in the pueblos of New Mex- 
ico, representing the communal household. This household is 
still to be seen at its lowest point in the lodges of the rov- 
ing Indians of the North, and it produced, when carried to 
its highest point, all the art and architecture of Uxmal, and 
all the so-called civilization which the Spanish conquerors ad- 
mired, exaggerated, and overthrew. The mysterious mounds 
of the Ohio Valley were erected only that they might give 
to their builders the advantages possessed without labor by 
those who dwelt upon the high table - lands of New Mexico. 
The great ruined edifices in the valley of the Chacos are 
the same in kind with the ruined "palaces" of Yucatan. All 
these — lodges, palaces, and pueblos alike — are but the com- 
munal dwellings of one great aboriginal race, of uncertain 
origin and history, varying greatly in grade of development, 
but one in institutions, in society, and in blood. This is the 
modern theory, a theory which has given a new impulse to all 



20 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

investigation and all thought upon this subject, but one which 
the lamented death 'of its originator leaves only half developed, 
after all, so that it must be mentioned as a theory still. 

What is now its strength, at this moment, and what its 
weakness ? Its strength is that of a strong, simple, intelli- 




COLOSSAL STATUE OF LHAAC-MOL. 



gible working hypothesis — not merely the best that has been 
offered, but the first. What is its weakness } This only, that, 
like many a promising theory in the natural sciences, it may 
prove to be only too simple, after all, and not quite adequate 
to account for the facts. 

Mr. Morgan, with all his great merits, had not always the 
moderation which gives such peculiar value to the works of 
Darwin ; he was not always willing to distinguish between 
what was firm ground and what was only tentative. In order 
to make his theory appear consistent he had to ignore many 
difficulties, and settle many points in an off-hand manner, and 
there is something almost exasperating in the positiveness with 
which he sometimes assumes as proved that which is only 
probable. Grant all his analogies of the gens and the com- 
munal dwelling, the fact still is that in studying the Central 



THE FIRST AMERICANS. 



21 



American remains we are dealing with a race who had got 
beyond mere household architecture, and were rising to the 
sphere of art, so that their attempts in this respect must 
enter into our estimate. In studying them from this point of 
view, we encounter new diflficulties which Mr. Morgan wholly 
ignores. The tales of the Spanish conquerors are scarcely 
harder to accept than the assumption that all the artistic dec- 
oration of the Yucatan edifices was lavished upon communal 
houses, built only to be densely packed with Indians " in the 
Middle Status of Barbarism," as Morgan calls them. That a 




SCULFTUKEl.) HEAD OF YUCATAN. 



Statue like that of Chaac-Mol, discovered by Dr. Le Plongeon 
at Chichen - Itza, should have been produced by a race not 
differing in descent or essential habits from the Northern Iro- 
quois, seems simply incredible. 



22 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



Consider the difference. In Central America we find the 
remains of a race which had begun to busy itself with the very 
highest department of art, the delineation of the human figure; 
and which had attained to grace and vigor, if not yet to beau- 
ty, in this direction. The stately stone heads of Yucatan ; the 
arch and spirited features depicted on the Maya incense-burn- 
ers ; the fine face carved in sandstone, brought from Topila, 
and now in possession of the New York Historical Society — 
these indicate a sphere of development utterly beyond that of 
those Northern Indians whose utmost achievement consists in 
some graceful vase like that found in Burlington, Vermont, 
and now preserved by the Vermont University. 





INCENSE-BURNERS FROM YUCATAN, 



It is safer to leave the question where it is left by another 
deceased American archaeologist scarcely less eminent than 
Mr. Morgan, and not less courageous, but far more gentle and 
more guarded, the late Samuel Foster Haven, of Worcester, 
Massachusetts, the accomplished librarian of the American 



THE FIRST AMERICANS. 23 

Antiquarian Society : " Mr. Morgan has grasped some of the 
problems of aboriginal character and habits with a firm and 
vigorous hand, but is far from being entitled to claim that he 
has discovered the entire secret of prehistoric life on this con- 
tinent." 



^R 


p 

5^ 




1 




1 




1 









1 




1 




J 


B 





FEMALE FACE FROM TOPI LA. 



But now suppose the modern theory to be accepted in its 
fulness. Let us agree, for the moment, with Morgan, that 
there was in America, when discovered, but one race of In- 
dians besides the Eskimo — the Red Race. Still there lies 
behind us the problem, in whose solution science has hardly 
yet gained even a foothold. Whence did this race originate ? 
Here we deliberately confuse ourselves a little by the word 
" discovery." When we speak of the discovery of America we 
always mean the arrival of Europeans, forgetting that there 
was probably a time when Europe itself was first discovered 
by Asiatics, and that for those Asiatics it was almost as easy 
to discover America. All that is necessary, even at this day, 
to bring a Japanese junk to the Pacific coast of North America 
is that it should be blown out to sea and then lose its rudder; 
the first mishap has often happened, the second casualty has 



24 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

almost always followed, and the Gulf Stream of the Pacific, 
the Kuro Siwo, or "black stream," or "Japan current," has 
done the rest. Mr. Charles W. Brooks, of San Francisco, has 
a record of no less than a hundred such instances, and there 
is no reason why similar events should not have been occur- 
ring for centuries. Nor is it, indeed, needful to go so far as 
this for a means of communication. Behring Strait is but 
little wider than the English Channel, and it is as easy to 
make the passage from Asia to America as from France to 
England ; and indeed easier for half the year, when Behring 
Strait is frozen. Besides all this, both geology and botany 
indicate that the separation between the two continents did 
not always exist. Dr. Asa Gray, our highest botanical author- 
ity, long since pointed out the extraordinary identity between 
the Japanese flora and that of the Northern United States, as 
indicating a period when the two continents were one. It is 
an argument difiBcult to resist, for surely flowers do not cross 
the ocean in junks, or traverse the frozen straits upon the ice. 
The colonization of America from Asia was thus practicable, 
at any rate, and that far more easily than any approach from 
the European side. The simple races on each side of Behring 
Strait, which now communicate with each other freely, must 
have done the same from very early times. They needed 
no consent of sovereigns to do it : they were not obliged to 
wait humbly in the antechamber of some king, suing for per- 
mission to discover for him another world. This we must 
recognize at the outset; but when it is granted, we are still 
upon the threshold. Concede that America is but an outlying 
Asia, it does not follow that America was peopled from Asia ; 
the course of population may first have gone the other way. 
Or it may be that the human race had upon each continent 
an autochthonous or indigenous place, according as we prefer 
a hard Greek word or a hard Latin word to express the simple 
fact that a race comes into existence on a certain soil, instead 



THE FIRST AMERICANS. 



25 



of migrating thither. Migrations, too, in plenty riiay in this 
case have come afterwards, and modified the type, giving to it 
that Asiatic or Mongoloid cast which is now acknowledged 
by almost all ethnologists. 




INDIAN VASE FOUND IN VERMONT. 



How long may this process of migration and mingling 
have gone on upon the American continent } Who can tell } 
Sir John Lubbock, a high authority, says " not more than three 
thousand years ;" but it is not so easy to fix a limit. To be 
sure, some evidences of antiquity that are well established in 
Europe are as yet wanting in America, or at least imperfectly 
proved. In the French bone-caves there have been found un- 
questionable representations of the mammoth scratched on 
pieces of its own ivory, and exhibiting the shaggy hair and 
curved tusks that distinguish it from all other elephants. 
There is as yet no such direct and unequivocal evidence in 
America of the existence of man during the interglacial period. 



26 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

The alleged evidence, as given in the books up to the present 
time, fails to satisfy the more cautious archaeologists. The 
so-called "elephants' trunks" used in ornamentation on the 
Central American buildings offer only a vague and remote 
resemblance to the supposed originals. The " elephant pipe " 
dug up in Iowa, and now preserved by the Davenport Acad- 
emy of Sciences, does not quite command confidence as to its 
genuineness. The " Elephant Mound," described and figured 
in the Smithsonian Report for 1872, has a merely suggestive 
resemblance, like most of the mounds, to the objects whose 
name it bears. Lapham long since pointed out that the names 
of " Lizard Mound," " Serpent Mound," and the like, are usu- 
ally based on very remote similarities ; and Squier tells us of 
one mound which has been likened successively to a bird, a 
bow and arrow, and a man. 

Other sources of evidences are scarcely more satisfactory. 
There is no doubt that mammoth bones have been found 
mingled with arrow-heads in some places, and with matting or 
pottery in others ; but unhappily some doubt rests as yet on 
all these discoveries. It is in no case quite sure that the de- 
posits had remained undisturbed as found, or that they had 
not been washed together by floods of water. Up to the pres- 
ent time the strongest argument in favor of the very early 
existence of man upon this continent is not to be found in 
such comparatively simple lines of evidence, but in the inves- 
tigations of Dr. Abbott among primeval implements in NeVv 
Jersey, or those of Professor J. D. Whitney among human 
remains in California. Their inquiries may yet conclusively 
establish the fact that the aboriginal American man was con- 
temporary with the mammoth ; in the mean time it is only 
probable, not quite proved. 

Must we not admit that in our efforts to explain the origin 
of the first American man, it is necessary to end, after all, 
with an interrogation mark.'' 




viking's war ship, engraved on rock in NORWAY. 



II. 



THE VISIT OF THE VIKINGS. 



THE American antiquarians of the last generation had a 
great disHke to anything vague or legendary, and they 
used to rejoice that there was nothing of that sort about the 
discovery of America. The history of other parts of the world, 
they said, might begin in myth and tradition, but here at least 
was firm ground, a definite starting-point, plain outlines, and 
no vague and shadowy romance. Yet they were destined to 
be disappointed, and it may be that nothing has been lost, 
after all. Our low American shores would look tame and un- 
interesting but for the cloud and mist which are perpetually 
trailing in varied beauty above them, giving a constant play 
of purple light and pale shadow, and making them deserve the 
name given to such shores by the old Norse legends, " Won- 
derstrands." It is the same, perhaps, with our early history. 
It may be fitting that the legends of the Northmen should 



28 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

come in, despite all the resistance of antiquarians, to supply 
just that indistinct and vague element which is needed for 
picturesqueness. At any rate, whether we like it or not, the 
legends are here. 

I can well remember, as a boy, the excitement produced 
among Harvard College professors when the ponderous vol- 
ume called " Antiquitates Americanae," containing the Norse 
legends of " Vinland," with the translations of Professor Rafn, 
made its appearance on the library table. For the first time 
the claim was openly made that there had been European vis- 
itors to this continent before Columbus. The historians shrank 
from the innovation : it spoiled their comfort. Indeed, Mr. 
George Bancroft to this day will hardly allude to the subject, 
and sets aside the legends, using a most inappropriate phrase, 
as "mythological." And it so happened, as will appear by- 
and-by, that when the claim was first made it was encumbered 
with some very poor arguments. Nevertheless, the main story 
was not permanently hurt by these weak points. Its truth 
has never been successfully impeached ; at any rate, we cannot 
deal with American history unless we give some place to the 
Norse legends. Picturesque and romantic in themselves, they 
concern men in whom we have every reason to be interested. 
These Northmen, or Vikings, were not merely a far-away peo- 
ple with whom we have nothing in common, but they really 
belonged to the self-same race of men with most of ourselves. 
They were, perhaps, the actual ancestors of some living Amer- 
icans, and kinsfolk to the majority. Men of the same race 
conquered England, and were known as Saxons ; then con- 
quered France, and were known as Normans ; and finally 
crossed over from France and conquered England again. 
These Norse Vikings were, like most of us, Scandinavians, 
and so were really closer to us in blood and in language than 
was the great Columbus. 

What were the ways and manners of these Vikings ? We 



THE VISIT OF THE VIKINGS. 29 

must remember at the outset that their name implies nothing 
of royalty. They were simply the dwellers on a vik, or bay. 
They were, in other words, the sea-side population of the Scan- 
dinavian peninsula, the only part of Europe which then sent 
forth a race of sea-rovers. They resembled in some respects 
the Algerine corsairs of a later period, but, unlike the Alge- 
rines, they were conquerors as well as pirates, and were ready 
to found settlements wherever they went. Nor were the Vi- 
kings yet Christians, for their life became more peaceful from 
the time when Christianity came among them. In the prime 
of their heathenism they were the terror of Europe. They 
carried their forays along the whole continent. They entered 
every port in England, and touched at every island on the 
Scottish coast. They sailed up French rivers, and Charle- 
magne, the ruler of Western Europe, wept at seeing their dark 
ships. They reached the Mediterranean, and formed out of 
their own number the famous Varangian guard of the later 
Greek emperors, the guard which is described by Walter Scott 
in " Count Robert of Paris." They reached Africa, which they 
called " Saracens' Land," and there took eighty castles. All 
their booty they sent back to Norway, and this wealth in- 
cluded not only what they took from enemies, but what they 
had from the very courts they served ; for it was the practice 
at Constantinople, when an emperor died, for the Norse guard 
to go through the palaces and take whatever they could hold 
in their hands. To this day Greek and Arabic gold coins 
and chains are found in the houses of the Norwegian peas- 
ants, and may be seen in the museums of Christiania and 
Copenhagen. 

Such were the Vikings, and it is needless to say that with 
such practices they were in perpetual turmoil at home, and 
needed a strong hand to keep the peace among them. Some- 
times a king would make a foray among his own people, as 
recorded in this extract from the " Heimskringla," or " Kings 



30 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

of Norway," written by Snorri Sturleson, and translated by 
Laing: 

" King Harald heard that the Vikings, who were in the West Sea in win- 
ter, plundered far and wide in the middle part of Norway, and therefore every 
summer he made an expedition to search the isles and outskerries [outlying 
rocks] on the coast. Wheresoever the Vikings heard of him they all took 
to flight, and most of them out into the open ocean. At last the king grew 
weary of this work, and therefore one summer he sailed with his fleet right 
out into the West Sea. First he came to Shetland, and he slew all the Vikings 
who could not save themselves by flight. Then King Harald sailed south- 
ward to the Orkney Islands, and cleared them all of Vikings. Thereafter 
he proceeded to the Hebrides, plundered there, and slew many Vikings who 
formerly had had men-at-arms under them. Many a battle was fought, and 
King Harald was always victorious. He then plundered far and wide in Scot- 
land itself, and had a battle there." 

We see from the last sentence that King Harald himself 
was but a stronger Viking, and that, after driving away other 
plunderers, he did their work for himself. Such were all the 
Norsemen of the period; they were daring, generous, open- 
handed. They called gold in their mythology " the serpent s 
bed," and called a man who was liberal in giving " a hater 
of the serpent's bed," because such a man parts with gold as 
with a thing he hates. But they were cruel, treacherous, un- 
scrupulous. Harald, when he commanded the emperor's body- 
guard at Constantinople, and was associated with Greek 
troops, always left his allies to fight for themselves and be 
defeated, and only fought where his Northmen could fight 
alone and get all the glory. While seeming to defend the 
Emperor Michael, he enticed him into his power and put out 
his eyes. The Norse chronicles never condemn such things ; 
there is never a voice in favor of peace or mercy ; but they 
assume, as a matter of course, that a leader shall be foremost 
in attack and last in retreat. In case of need he must give 
his life for his men. There is no finer touch in Homer than 
is found in one of the sagas which purport to describe the 
Norse voyages to Vinland. It must be remembered, in order 



THE VISIT OF THE VIKINGS. 3 1 

to understand it, that the Northmen believed that certain seas 
were infested with the teredo, or ship-worm, and that vessels in 
those seas were in the very greatest danger. 

" Bjarni Grimalfson was driven with his ship into the Irish Ocean, and 
they came into a worm -sea, and straightway began the ship to sink under 
them. They had a boat which was smeared with seal oil, for the sea-worms 
do not attack that. They went into the boat, and then saw that it could not 
hold them all. Then said Bjarni : ' Since the boat cannot give room to more 
than the half of our men, it is my counsel that lots should be drawn for those 
to go in the boat, for it shall not be according to rank.' This thought they 
all so high-minded an offer that no one would speak against it. They then 
did so that lots were drawn, and it fell upon Bjarni to go in the boat, and the 
half of the men with him, for the boat had not room for more. But when 
they had gotten into the boat, then said an Icelandic man who was in the 
ship, and had come with Bjarni from Iceland, ' Dost thou intend, Bjarni, to 
separate from me here ?' Bjarni answered, ' So it turns out.' Then said the 
other, ' Very different was thy promise to my father when I went with thee 
from Iceland than thus to abandon me, for thou saidst that we should both 
share the same fate.' Bjarni replied : ' It shall not be thus. Go thou down 
into the boat, and I will go up into the ship, since I see that thou art so de- 
sirous to live.' Then went Bjarni up into the ship, but this man down into 
the boat, and after that continued they their voyage until they came to Dublin, 
in Ireland, and told there these things. But it is most people's belief that 
Bjarni and his companions were lost in the worm-sea, for nothing was heard 
of them since that time." 

Centuries have passed since the ships of the Vikings 
floated on the water, and yet we know, almost as if they had 
been launched yesterday, their model and their build. They 
are found delineated on rocks in Norway, and their remains 
are still dug up from beneath the ground. One of them was 
unearthed lately from a mound of blue clay at Gokstad or 
Sandefjord, in Norway, at a point now half a mile from the 
sea; and it had plainly been used as the burial-place of its 
owner. The sepulchral chamber in which the body of the 
Viking had been deposited was built amidships, being tent- 
like in shape, and made of logs placed side by side, leaning 
against a ridge-pole. In this chamber were found human 
bones, the bones of a little dog, the bones and feathers of a 



32 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



peacock, some fish - hooks, and several bronze and lead orna- 
ments for belts and harness. Round about the ship were 
found the bones of nine or ten horses and dogs, which had 
probably been sacrificed at the time of the burial. The ves- 
sel was seventy-seven feet eleven inches at the greatest length, 
and sixteen feet eleven inches at the greatest width, and from 
the top of the keel to the gunwale amidships she was five 
feet nine inches deep. She had twenty ribs, and would draw 
less than four feet of water. She was clinker-built; that is, 
had plates slightly overlapped, like the shingles on the side 
of a house. The planks and timbers of the frame were fast- 









-^ 



NORSE BOAT UNEARTHED AT SANDEFJORD. 



ened together with withes made of roots, but the oaken 
boards of the side were united by iron rivets firmly clinched. 
The bow and stern were similar in shape, and must have 
risen hiHi out of water, but were so broken that it was im- 
possible to tell how they originally ended. The keel was 
deep, and made of thick oak beams, and there was no trace 
of any metallic sheathing; but an iron anchor was found al- 
most rusted to pieces. There was no deck,' and the seats for 
rowers had been taken out. The oars were twenty feet long, 
and the oar -holes, sixteen on each side, had slits sloping to- 
wards the stern to allow the blades of the oars to be put 
through from inside. 

The most peculiar thing about the ship was the rudder, 
which was on the starboard or right side, this side being 



THE VISIT OF THE VIKINGS. 33 

originally called "steerboard" from this circumstance. The 
rudder was like a large oar, with long blade and short handle, 
and was attached, not to the side of the boat, but to the end 
of a conical piece of wood which projected almost a foot 
from the side of the vessel, and almost two feet from the 
stern. This piece of wood was bored down its length, and 
no doubt a rope passing through it secured the rudder to 
the ship's side. It was steered by a tiller attached to the 
handle, and perhaps also by a rope fastened to the blade. 
As a whole, this disinterred vessel proved to be anything but 
the rude and primitive craft which might have been expected ; 
it was neatly built and well preserved, constructed on what a 
sailor would call beautiful lines, and eminently fitted for sea 
service. Many such vessels may be found depicted on the 
celebrated Bayeux tapestry; and the peculiar position of the 
rudder explains the treaty mentioned in the Heimskringla, 
giving to Norway all lands lying west of Scotland between 
which and the mainland a vessel could pass with her rudder 
shipped. 

The vessel thus described is preserved at Christiania, and 
is here represented from an engraving, for which I am in- 
debted to Professor R. B. Anderson, of Madison, Wisconsin. 
A full account of it, with many illustrations, was published in 
a quarto volume by N, Nicolayson, at Christiania, in 1882. 
This was not one of the ver}^ largest ships, for some of them 
had thirty oars on each side, and vessels carrying from twenty 
to twenty-five were not uncommon. The largest of these were 
called Dragons, and other sizes were known as Serpents or 
Cranes. The ship itself was often so built as to represent 
the name it bore : the dragon, for instance, was a long low 
vessel, with the gilded head of a dragon at the bow, and the 
gilded tail at the stern ; the moving oars at the side might 
represent the legs of the imaginary creature, the row of shin- 
ing red and white shields that were hung over the gunwale 



3 



34 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

looked like the monster's scales, and the sails striped with 
red and blue might suggest his wings. The ship preserved 
at Christiania is described as having had but a single mast, 
set into a block of wood so large that it is said no such 
block could now be cut in Norway. Probably the sail was 
much like those still carried by large open boats in that coun- 
try — a single square sail on a mast forty feet long. These 
masts have no standing rigging, and are taken down when 
not in use ; and this was probably the practice of the Vikings. 
In case of danger these sea-rovers trusted chiefly to their 
oars. Once, when King Harald's fleet was on its way back 
to Norway with plunder from Denmark, the vessels lay all 
night at anchor in the fog, and when the sun pierced the 
fog in the morning it seemed as if many lights were burn- 
ing in the sea. Then Harald said : " It is a fleet of Danish 
ships, and the sun strikes on the gilded dragon - heads : furl 
the sail, and take to the oars." The Norse ships were heavy 
with plunder, while the Danish ships were light. Harald first 
threw overboard light wood, and placed upon it clothing and 
goods of the Danes, that they might see it and pick it up ; 
then he threw overboard his provisions, and lastly his pris- 
oners. The Danes stopped for these, and the Norwegians 
got off with the rest. It was only the chance of war that 
saved the fugitives ; had they risked a battle and lost it, they 
would have been captured, killed, or drowned. Yet it was 
not easy to drown them ; they rarely went far from shore, and 
they were, moreover, swimmers from childhood, even in the icy 
waters of the North, and they had the art, in swimming, of 
hiding their heads beneath their floating shields, so that it 
was hard to find them. They were full of devices. It is 
recorded of one of them, for instance, that he always carried 
tinder in a walnut shell, enclosed in a ball of wax, so that, no 
matter how long Submerged, he could make a fire on reach- 
ing shore. 



THE VISIT OF THE VIKINGS. 35 

How were these rovers armed and dressed ? They fought 
with stones, arrows, and spears; they had grappHng- irons on 
board, with which to draw other vessels to them ; and the 
fighting men were posted on the high bows and sterns, which 
sometimes had scaffoldings or even castles on them, so that 
missiles could be thrown down on other vessels. As to their 
appearance on land, it is recorded that when Sweinke and his 
five hundred men came to a "thing,'" or council, in Norway, 
all were clad in iron, with their weapons bright, and they 
were so well armed that they looked like pieces of shining 
ice. Other men present were clad in leather cloaks, with hal- 
berds on their shoulders and steel caps on their heads. Si- 
gurd, the king's messenger, wore a scarlet coat and a blue 
coat over it, and he rose and told Sweinke that unless he 
obeyed the king's orders he should be driven out of the coun- 
try. Then Sweinke rose, threw off his steel helmet, and re- 
torted on him : 

" Thou useless fellow, with a coat without arms and a kirtle with skirts, 
wilt thou drive me out of the country? Formerly thou wast not so mighty, 
and thy pride was less when King Hakon, my foster-son, was in life. Then 
thou wast as frightened as a mouse in a mouse-trap, and hid thyself under a 
heap of clothes, like a dog on board of a ship. Thou wast thrust into a 
leather bag like corn into a sack, and driven from house to farm like a year- 
old colt ; and dost thou dare to drive me from the land ? Let us stand up 
and attack him !" 

Then they attacked, and Sigurd escaped with great diffi- 
culty. 

The leaders and kings wore often rich and costly gar- 
ments. When Kino- Maa^nus landed in Ireland, with his mar- 
shal Eyvind, to carry away cattle, he had a helmet on his head, 
a red shield in which was inlaid a gilded lion, and was girt 
with the sword " Legbiter," of which the hilt was of tooth 
(ivory), and the hand-grip wound about with gold thread, and 
the sword was extremely sharp. "In his hand he had a short 
spear, and a red silk short cloak over his coat, on which, both 



36 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

before and behind, was embroidered a lion in yellow silk, and 
all men acknowledged that they had never seen a brisker, 
statelier man. Eyvind had also a red silk coat like the king's, 
and he also was a stout, handsome, warlike man." But the 
ascendency of the chief did not come from his garments ; it 
consisted in personal power of mind and prowess of body, and 
when these decayed, the command was gone. Such were the 
fierce, frank men who, as is claimed, stretched their wander- 
ings over the western sea, and at last reached Vinland — that 
is to say, the continent of North America. 

What led the Northmen to this continent ? A trivial cir- 
cumstance first drew them westward, after they had already 
colonized Iceland and made it their home. Those who have 
visited the Smithsonian Institution at Washington will remem- 
ber the great carved door-posts, ornamented with heads, which 
are used by the Indians of the north-west coasts. It is to a 
pair of posts somewhat like these, called by the Northmen 
setstokka, or seat-posts, that we owe the discovery of Greenland, 
and afterwards of Vinland. When the Northmen removed 
from one place to another, they threw these seat -posts into 
the sea on approaching the shore, and wherever the posts 
went aground there they dwelt. Erik the Red, a wandering 
Norseman who was dwelling in Iceland, had lent his posts 
to a friend, and could not get them back. This led to a quar- 
rel, and Erik was declared an outlaw. He went to sea, and 
discovered Greenland, which he thus called because, he said, 
" people will be attracted thither if the land has a good name." 
There he took up his abode, leading a colony with him, about 
A.D. 986, fifteen years before Christianity was established by 
law in Iceland. The colony prospered, and there is much 
evidence that the climate of Greenland was then milder, and 
that it supported a far larger population than now. The 
ruined churches of Greenland still testify to a period of civ- 
ilization quite beyond the present. 



THE VISIT OF THE VIKINGS. 37 

With Erik the Red went a man named Heriulf Bardson. 
Biorni, or Bjarni, this Heriulf's son, was absent from home 
when they left ; he was himself a rover, but had always spent 
his winters with his father, and resolved to follow him to 
Greenland, though he warned his men that the voyage w^as 
imprudent, since none of them had sailed in those seas. He 







OLD NORSE RUINS IN GREENLAND. 



sailed westward, was lost in fogs, and at last came to a land 
with small hills covered with wood. This could not, he 
thought, be Greenland ; so he turned about, and leaving this 
land to larboard, " let the foot of the sail look towards land," 
that is, sailed away from land. He came to another land, flat 
and still wooded. Then he sailed seaward with a south-west 
wind for two days, when they saw another land, but thought 
it could not be Greenland because there were no glaciers. 
The sailors wished to land for wood and water, but Bjarni 
would not — " but he got some hard speeches for that from his 
sailors," the saga, or legend, says. Then they sailed out to 
sea with a south-west wind for three days, and saw a third 
land, mountainous and with glaciers, and seeming to be an 
island ; and after this they sailed four days more, and reached 
Greenland, where Bjarni found his father, and lived with him 
ever after. 

But it seems that the adventurous countrymen of Bjarni 
were quite displeased with him for not exploring farther; and 



38 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

at last a daring man named Leif bought Bjarni's ship, and set 
sail, with thirty -five companions, to explore southward and 
westward. First they reached the land which Bjarni had last 
seen, the high island with the glaciers, and this they called 
Helluland, or " Flat-stone Land." Then they came to another 
land which they called Marckland, or " Woodland." Then 
they sailed two days with a north-east wind, and came to a 
land with an island north of it; and landing on this island, 
they found sweet dew on the grass, which has been explained 
as the honey -dew sometimes left by an insect called aphis. 
This pleased them, like great boys, as they were ; then they 
sailed between the island and the land ; then the ship ran 
aground, but was at last lifted by the tide, when they sailed 
up a river and into a lake ; and there they cast anchor, and 
brought their sleeping-cots on shore, and remained a long time. 

They built houses there and spent the winter; there were 
salmon in the lake, the winter was very mild, and day and 
night were more equal than in Greenland. They explored 
the land, and one day a man of their number, Leif's foster- 
brother, named Tyrker, came from a long expedition and told 
Leif, in great excitement, that he had some news for him ; he 
had found grape-vines and grapes. "Can that be true, my 
foster-brother?" said Leif. "Surely it is true," he said, "for I 
was brought up where there is no want of grape-vines and 
grapes" — he being a German. The next day they filled their 
long-boat with grapes, and in the spring they sailed back to 
Greenland with a ship's load of tree-trunks — much needed 
there — and with the news of the newly discovered land, called 
Vinland, or " Wine-land." Leif was ever after known as " Leif 
the Lucky," from this success. 

But still the Norsemen in Greenland thought the new re- 
gion had been too little explored, so Thorwald, Leif's brother, 
took the" same ship, and made a third trip, with thirty men. 
He reached the huts the other party had built, called in the 



THE VISIT OF THE VIKINGS. 39 

legends Leifsbudir, or " Leif s booths." They spent two win- 
ters there, fishing and exploring, and in the second summer 
their ship was aground under a ness, or cape, to the north- 
ward, and they had to repair it. The broken keel they set 
up on the ness as a memorial, and called it Kialarness. After- 
wards they saw some of the natives for the first time, and 
killed all but one, in their savage wa}'. Soon after there 
came forth from a bay "innumerable skin -boats," and attacked 
them. The men on board were what they called " Skraelings," 
or dwarfs, and they fought with arrows, one of which killed 
Thorwald, and he was buried, with a cross at the head of his 
grave, on a cape which they called Krossaness, or " Cross 
Cape." The saga reminds us that " Greenland was then 
Christianized, but Erik the Red had died before Christianity 
came thither." 

Thorwald's men went back to Greenland without him, 
their ship being loaded with grape-vines and grapes. The 
next expedition to Vinland was a much larger one, headed by 
a rich man from Norway named Karlsefne, who had dwelt 
with Leif in Greenland, and had been persuaded to come on 
this enterprise. He brought a colony of sixty men and five 
women, and they had cattle and provisions. They found a 
place where a river ran out from the land, and through a lake 
into the sea; one could not enter from the sea except at high- 
water. They found vines growing, and fields of wild wheat; 
there were fish in the lake, and wild beasts in the woods. 
Here they established themselves at a place called Hop, from 
the Icelandic word hopa, to recede, meaning an inlet from the 
ocean. Here they dwelt, and during the first summer the 
natives came in skin boats to trade with them — a race de- 
scribed as black and ill-favored, with large eyes and broad 
cheeks, and with coarse hair on their heads. On their first 
visit these visitors passed near the cattle, and were so fright- 
ened by the bellowing of the bull that they ran away again. 



40 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

The natives brought all sorts of furs to sell, and wished, for 
weapons, but those were refused by Karlsefne, who had a 
more profitable project, which the legends thus describe : " He 
took this plan — he bade the women bring out their dairy- 
stuff for them [milk, butter, and the like], and so soon as the 
'Skraelings saw this they would have that and nothing more. 
Now this was the way the Skraelings traded : they bore off 
their wares in their stomachs, but Karlsefne and his com- 
panions had their bags and skin wares, and so they parted." 
This happened again, and then one of the Norsemen killed 
a native, so that the next time they came as enemies, armed 
with slings, and raising upon a pole a great blue ball, which 
they swung at the Norsemen with great noise. It may have 
been only an Eskimo harpoon with a bladder attached, but it 
had its effect ; the Norsemen were terrified, and were running 
away, when a woman named Freydis, daughter of Erik the 
Red, stopped them by her reproaches, and urged them on. 
" Why do ye run," she said, " stout men as ye are, before 
these miserable wretches, whom I thought ye would knock 
down like cattle ? If I had weapons, methinks I could fight 
better than any of you." With this she took up a sword that 
lay beside a dead man, the fight was renewed, and the Skrael- 
ings were beaten off. 

There is a curious account of one " large and handsome 
man," who seemed to be the leader of the Skraelings. One 
of the natives took up an axe, a thing which he had appar- 
ently never seen before, and struck at one of his companions 
and killed him. Upon which this leader took the axe and 
threw it into the sea in terror, and after this they all retreat- 
ed, and came no more. Karlsefne's wife had a child that win- 
ter who was called Snorri, and the child is believed to have 
been the ancestor of some famous Scandinavians, including 
Thorwaldsen the sculptor. But in spring they all returned 
■ to Greenland with a load of valuable timber, and thence went 



THE VISIT OF THE VIKINGS. 41 

to Iceland, so that Snorri grew up there, and his children 
after him. One more attempt was made to colonize Vinland, 
but it failed through the selfishness of a woman who had or- 
ganized it — the same Freydis who had shown so much cour- 
age, but who was also cruel and grasping; and after her re- 
turn to Greenland, perhaps in 1013, we hear no more of 
Vinland, except as a thing of the past. 

There are full accounts of all these events, from manu- 
scripts of good authority, preserved in Iceland ; the chief nar- 
ratives being the saga of Erik the Red and the Karlsefne 
saga, the one having been written in Greenland, the other in 
Iceland. These have been repeatedly translated into various 
languages, and their most accessible form in English is in 
Beamish's translation, which first appeared in London in 1841, 
and has lately been reprinted by the Prince Society of Bos- 
ton, under the editorship of Rev. E. L. Slafter. This version 
is, however, incomplete, and is also less vivid and graphic than 
a partial one which appeared in the Massadmsetts Quarterly 
Review for March, 1849, by James Elliot Cabot, of Brookline, 
Massachusetts. There are half a dozen other references of 
undoubted authority in later Norse manuscripts to " Vinland 
the Good " as a region well authenticated. Mingled with 
these are other allusions to a still dimmer and more shadowy 
land beyond Vinland, and called " Whiteman's Land," or " Ire- 
land the Mickle," a land said to be inhabited by men in white 
garments, who raised fiags or poles. But this is too remote 
and uncertain to be seriously described. 

Such is the Norse leo-end of the visit of the Vikino^s. But 
to tell the tale in its present form gives very little impression 
of the startling surprise with which it came before the com- 
munity of scholars nearly half a century ago. It was not a 
new story to the Scandinavian scholars : the learned anti- 
quary Torfaeus knew almost as much about it in 1707 as we 
know to-day. But when Professor Rafn published, in 1837, 



42 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

his great folio volume in half a dozen different languages, he 
thought he knew a great deal more about the whole affair 
than was actually the case, for he mingled the Norse legend 
with the Dighton Rock, and the Old Mill at Newport, and 
with other possible memorials of the Northmen in America 
— matters which have since turned out to be no memorials at 
all. The great volume of " Antiquitates Americanae " contains 
no less than twelve separate engravings of the Dighton Rock, 
some of them so unlike one another that it seems impossible 
that they can have been taken from the same inscription. 
Out of some of them Dr. Rafn found no difficulty in decipher- 
ing the name of Thorfinn and the figures CXXXI., being the 
number of Thorwald's party. Dr. T. A. Webb, then secre- 
tary of the Rhode Island Historical Society, supplied also half 
a dozen other inscriptions from rocks in Massachusetts and 
Rhode Island, which are duly figured in the great folio ; and 
another member of the Danish Historical Society, taking Dr. 
Webb's statements as a basis, expanded them with what seems 
like deliberate ingenuity, but was more likely simple blunder- 
ing. Dr. Webb stated, for instance, that there were " in the 
western part of our country numerous and extensive mounds, 
similar to the tumuli that are so often met with in Scandi- 
navia, Russia,* and Tartary, also the remains of fortifications, 
etc." Mr. Beamish, with the usual vague notion of Europeans 
as to American geography, first reads "county" for "country," 
and then assigns all these vast remains to " the western part 
of the county of Bristol, in the State of Massachusetts." And 
the same writer, with still bolder enterprise, carrying his im- 
aginary traces of the Northmen into South America, gives 
a report of a huge column discovered near Bahia, in Brazil, 
bearing a colossal figure with the hand pointing to the North- 
pole. It was more than suspected from certain inscriptions, 
according to Mr. Beamish, that this also bore a Scandinavian 
origin. Such was the eager temper of that period that it is 



THE VISIT OF THE VIKINGS. 



43 










THE OLD MILL AT NEWPORT, R, L 



a wonder they did not attribute a Scandinavian origin to 
Trenton Falls or the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. 

For some reason or other the Old Mill at Newport did 
not play a prominent part in the great volume of Professor 
Rafn, but he published a 
pamphlet at Copenhagen in 
1 84 1, under the name of 
" Americas Opdagelse," con- 
taining a briefer account of 
the discoveries, and this con- 
tains no less than seven full- 
page engravings of the New- 
port structure, all intended 
to prove its Norse origin. 
But all these fancies are 
now pretty thoroughly swept 

away. The Norse origin of the Old Mill has found no sci- 
entific supporters since Rev. C. T. Brooks and Dr. Palfrey 
showed that there was just such a mill at Chesterton, England, 
the very region from which Governor Benedict Arnold came, 
who, in his will, made in 1678, spoke of it as "my stone-built 
windmill," and who undoubtedly copied its structure from the 
building remembered from his boyhood. A mere glance at 
two recent photographs of the two buildings will be enough 
to settle the question for most readers. 

And in a much similar way the Norse origin claimed for 
the Dighton Rock has been set aside. So long as men be- 
lieved with Dr. Webb that " nowhere throughout our wide- 
spread domain is a single instance of their [the Indians] 
having recorded their deeds or history on stone," it was 
quite natural to look to some unknown race for the origin 
of this single inscription. But now when the volumes of 
Western exploration are full of inscriptions whose Indian ori- 
gin is undoubted, this view has fallen wholly into disuse. If 



44 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



we put side by side a representation of the Dighton Rock 
as it now appears, and one of the Indian inscriptions tran- 




STONE WINDMILL AT CHESTERTON. 



scribed in New Mexico by Lieutenant Simpson, we can hardly 
doubt that the two had essentially a common origin. There 
are the same crudely executed and elongated human figures, 
and the same series of crosses, easily interpreted, when hori- 
zontal, into letters and figures. 

Another rock, supposed by some to be a memorial of the 
Northmen, has lately been described and figured. It lies 
upon the shore, on the farm of Dr. C. H. R. Doringh, with- 
in the township of Bristol, Rhode Island. Mr. W. J. Miller, 
of Bristol, a well-known antiquarian, gives a representation of 
it in his little book entitled "The Wampanoag Indians." The 



THE VISIT OF THE VIKINGS. 



45 



rock is of graywacke, and is ten and a half by six and a half 
feet in length, and twenty-one inches thick. It is only bare 
at low tide, and the surface is much worn by the waves. 
There is inscribed on it a boat, with a series of lines and an- 
gles, the whole being claimed as an inscription, and the theory 
of Mr. Miller being that it was carved by some sailor left in 
charge of a boat and awaiting his companions. Had the ac- 
count been printed in 1840, it would have furnished the whole 
Danish Society of Antiquarians with a great argument, and 
even now it well deserves attention. Yet whoever will com- 
pare the outline of the boat with the Norse ship already 
figured will see that they have little in common ; and almost 




THE DIGHTON ROCK. 



46 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



any New Mexican inscription will show in different places 
very much the same idle combination of lines and angles. 

All these supposed Norse remains being ruled out of the 
question, we must draw our whole evidence from the Norse 

saeas themselves. On this 



A 






THE MOUNT HOPE BAY INSCRIPTION. 



part of the subject, also, 
there is now a general 
consent of experts. There 
can scarcely be a- doubt 
that the Norsemen at an 
early period not only set- 
tled in Greenland, but visited lands beyond Greenland, which 
lands could only have been a part of the continent of North 
America. This Mr. Bancroft himself concedes as probable. 
It is true that this rests on the sagas alone, and that these 
were simply oral traditions, written down perhaps two centuries 
after the events, while the oldest existing manuscripts are dated 
two centuries later still. Most of the early history of Northern 
Europe, however, and of England itself, rests upon very similar 
authority ; and there is no reason to set this kind of testimony 
aside merely because it 
relates to America. But 
when we come to fix the 
precise topography of 
their explorations, we 
have very few data left 
after the Dighton Rock 
and the Newport Mill 
are struck out of the evi- 
dence. 

We can argue nothing from their rate of sailing, for we 
do not know how often they sailed all night, and how often 
they followed the usual Norse method of anchoring at dark. 
Little weight is now attached to the alleged astronomical cal- 




HIEROGLYPHICS ON ROCK IN NEW MEXICO. 



THE VISIT OF THE VIKINGS. 



47 



dilation in the sagas, to the effect that in Vinland, on the 
shortest day, the sun rose at half -past seven and set at half- 
past four, which would show the place to have been some- 
where in the neighborhood of Mount Hope Bay. Closer 
observation has shown that no such assertion as that here 
made is to be found in the Norse narrative. The Norsemen 
did not divide their time into days and hours, but, like sailors, 
into " watches." A watch included three hours, and the le- 




HIEROGLYPHICS ON INSCRIPTION ROCK, NEW MEXICO. 



gends only say that the sun rose, on that day, within the watch 
called " Dagmalastad," and set in that called " Eyktarstad " 
{Sol Jiovdi thar Eyktarstad ok Dagmalastad nm Skamdegi). 
This fact greatly impressed the Norse imagination, as in 
Iceland it rose and set within one and the same watch. But 
this gives no means for any precise calculation, inasmuch as 
there is a range of six hours between the longest and the 
shortest estimate that might be founded upon it. As a con- 
sequence, Rafns calculation puts Vinland about the latitude 



48 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

of 41°, or Mount Hope Bay, while Torfaeus places it about 
49°, or near Newfoundland. It is, after all, as has been re- 
marked by Dr. William Everett, about as definite as if the 
sagas had told us that in Vinland daylight lasted from break- 
fast-time till the middle of the afternoon. 

The argument founded on climate is inconclusive. Wild 
grapes grow in Rhode Island, and they also grow in Canada 
and Nova Scotia. The Northmen found no frost during their 
first winter in Vinland; but it is also recorded that in Iceland 
durins: a certain winter there was no snow. If the climate of 
Greenland was milder in those days, so it may have been with 
Labrador. Coincidences of name amount to almost as little. 
The name of Wood's Hole, on the coast of Massachusetts, has 
been lately altered to Wood's Holl, to correspond to the Norse 
name for hill. Mount Hope Bay, commonly derived from the 
Indian Montaup, has been carried farther back, and has been 
claimed to represent the Hop where Leif's booths were built, 
although the same Indian word occurs in many other places. 
All history shows that nothing is less to be relied upon than 
these analogies. How unanswerable seemed the suggestion 
of the old traveller Howell, that the words "elf" and "goblin" 
represented the long strife between Guelf and Ghibelline in 
Italy, until it turned out that "elf" and "goblin" were much 
the older words ! 

There are scarcely two interpreters who precisely agree 
as to the places visited by the Northmen, and those who are 
surest in their opinions are usually those who live farthest 
from the points described. Professor Rafn found Vinland 
along the coast of New England ; Professor Rask, his con- 
temporary, found it in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, or Labra- 
dor. The latter urged, with much reason, that it was far 
easier to discover wild grapes in Nova Scotia than to meet 
Eskimo in what is now Rhode Island ; and that the whole 
story of the terror of the Skraelings before the bull indicates 



THE VISIT OF THE VIKINGS. 49 

an island people like those of Newfoundland or Prince Edward 
Island, and certainly not the New England Indians, who were 
familiar with the moose, and might have seen the buffalo. He 
might also have added, what was first pointed out by Mr. J. 
Elliot Cabot, that the repeated voyages from Greenland to 
Vinland, and the perfect facility with which successive explor- 
ers found the newly discovered region, indicate some spot 
much nearer Greenland than Mount Hope Bay, which would 
have required six hundred miles of intricate and dangerous 
coast navigation, without chart or compass, in order to reach 
it. Again, Rafn finds it easy to place the site of Leif's booths 
at Bristol, Rhode Island, and M. Gravier, a Frenchman, writ- 
ing so lately as 1874, has not a doubt upon the subject. But 
a sail from Fall River to Newport, or indeed a mere study of 
the map, will show any dispassionate man that the description 
given by the sagas has hardly anything in common with the 
Rhode Island locality. The sagas describe an inland lake 
communicating with the sea by a shallow river only accessible 
at high tide, whereas Mount Hope Bay is a broad expanse of 
salt water opening into the still wider gulf of Narraganset 
Bay, and communicating with the sea by a passage wide and 
deep enough for the navies of the world to enter. Even sup- 
posing the Northmen to have found their way in through 
what is called the Seaconnet passage, the description does 
not apply much better to that. Even if it did, these hardy 
sailors must have recognized, the moment they reached the 
bay itself, that they had come in at the back door, not at the 
front ; and the main access to the ocean must instantly have 
revealed itself. It suffices to say that the whole interpreta- 
tion, which seems so easy to transatlantic writers, is utterly 
rejected by Professor Henry Mitchell, of the Coast Survey, in 
a manuscript report which lies before me. And the same 
vagueness and indefiniteness mark all the descriptions of the 
Northmen. Nothing is more difficult than to depict in words 

4 



50 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



with any accuracy in an unscientific age the features of a low 
and monotonous sea-shore ; and this, with the changes under- 
gone by the coast of southern New England during nine hun- 
dred years, renders the identification of any spot visited by 
the Northmen practically impossible. 

The Maine Historical Society has reprinted a map of the 
North Atlantic, made by the Icelander Sigurd Stephanius in 

the year 1570, and pre- 
served by the Scandina- 
vian historian Torfaeus in 
his " Gronlandia Antiqua " 
(1706). In this map all 
that is south of Green- 
land, including Vinland, is 
a part of one continent. 
Helluland and Marckland 
appear upon it, and Vin- 
land is a promontory ex- 
tendi nor forth from the 
land of the Skraelings. 
But whether this abrupt 
cape is meant to represent 
Cape Cod, as some would 
urge, or the far more con- 
spicuous headlands of Newfoundland or Nova Scotia, must be 
left to conjecture. The fact that it is in the same latitude 
with the southern part of England would indicate the more 
northern situation ; and it is to be noted that all these prom- 
ontories are depicted as mountainous — a character which the 
Northmen, accustomed to the heights of Iceland and Green- 
land, could hardly have applied to what must have seemed to 
them the trivial elevations of Cape Cod or Mount Hope Bay. 
A sand-hill two hundred feet high would hardly have done 
duty for a mountain on a map made in Iceland. But the cha- 




NORTH ATLANTIC, BY THE ICELANDER 
SIGURD STEPHANIUS, IN 1 570. 



THE VISIT OF THE VIKINGS. 5 1 

otic geography of the whole map — in which England is thrown 
out into mid-ocean, Iceland appears nearly as large as Eng- 
land, one of the Shetland Islands is as large as Ireland, and 
the imaginary island of Frisland is fully displayed — affords a 
sufficient warning against taking too literally any details con- 
tained in the sagas. If learned Icelanders were so utterly 
unable, five centuries later, to depict the Europe which they 
knew so well, how could their less learned ancestors have 
given any accurate topography of the America which they 
knew so little ? They did not give it ; but the same activity 
of imagination which enabled Professor Rafn to find the name 
of Thorwald in an Indian inscription might well permit him 
to identify Krossaness with Sound Point, and Vinland with 
Nantucket. 

Unless authentic Norse remains are hereafter unearthed, 
there is very little hope of ever identifying a single spot where 
the Vikings landed, or a single inlet ever furrowed by their 
keels. But that these bold rovers in sailing westward discov- 
ered lands beyond Greenland is as sure as anything can be 
that rests on sagas and traditions only — as sure, that is, as 
most things in the earliest annals of Europe. They discov- 
ered America ; what part of America is of little consequence. 
They discovered it without clear intention, and by a series of 
what might almost be called coasting voyages, stretching from 
Norway to Scotland, from Scotland to Iceland, and thence to 
Greenland, and at last to the North American continent, each 
passage extending but a few hundred miles, though those miles 
lay through stormy and icy seas. They made these discov- 
eries simply as adventurers. There is nothing in their achieve- 
ment worthy to be compared with the great deed of Columbus, 
when he formed with deliberate dignity a heroic purpose, and 
set sail across an unknown sea upon the faith of a conviction. 
As compared with him and his companions, the Vikings seem 
but boys beside men. 



III. 

THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS. 

TWENTY- FIVE years ago the American minister at the 
court of Turin was conversing with a young Itahan of 
high rank from the island of Sardinia, who had come to Turin 
for education. This young man remarked to the American 
minister, Mr, Kinney, that he had lately heard about a great 
Spanish or Italian navigator who had sailed westward from 
Spain, in the latter part of the fifteenth century, with the hope 
of making discoveries. Did Mr. Kinney know what had be- 
come of that adventurer; had he been heard of again, and if 
so, what had he accomplished } This, it seemed, was all that 
was known in Sardinia respecting the fame and deeds of Co- 
lumbus. The world at large is a little better off, and can at 
least tell what Columbus found. But whether he really first 
found it, and is entitled to the name of discoverer, has of late 
been treated as an unsettled question. He long since lost the 
opportunity of giving his name to the new continent ; there 
have been hot disputes as to whether he really first reached 
it. Who knows but that the world will end by doubting if 
there ever was such a person as Columbus at all ? 

What does discovery mean } in what does it consist ? If 
the Vikings had already visited the American shore, could it 
be rediscovered 1 Was it not easy for Columbus to visit Ice- 
land, to hear the legends of the Vikings, and to follow in their 
path } These are questions that have lately been often asked. 



THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS. 



53 



The answer is that Columbus probably visited Iceland, possi- 
bly heard the Viking legends, but certainly did not follow in 




CHRISTUPHER COLUMBUS. 



the path they indicated. To follow them would have been to 
make a series of successive voyages, as they did, each a sort 



54 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

of coasting trip, from Norway to Iceland, from Iceland to 
Greenland, from Greenland to Vinland. To follow them would 
have been to steer north -northwest, whereas his glory lies in 
the fact that he sailed due west into the open sea, and found 
America. His will begins, "In the name of the Most Holy 
Trinity who inspired me with the idea, and afterwards con- 
firmed me in it, that by traversing the ocean westwardly','' etc. 
Thus accurately did he state his own title to fame. So far 
as climate and weather were concerned, he actually incurred 
less risk than the Northmen ; but when we consider that he 
sailed directly out across an unknown ocean on the faith of a 
theory, his deed was incomparably greater. 

There is one strong reason for believing that Columbus 
knew but vaguely of their voyage, or did not know of it at all, 
or did not connect the Vinland they found with the India he 
sought. This is the fact, that he never, so far as we know, 
used their success as an argument in trying to persuade other 
people. For eight years, by his own statement, he was en- 
deavoring to convert men to his project. " For eight years," 
he says, " I was torn with disputes, and my project was matter 
of mockery " {cosa de bindd). During this time he never made 
one convert among those best qualified, either through theory 
or practice, to form an opinion — " not a pilot, nor a sailor, nor 
a philosopher, nor any kind of scientific man," he says, " put 
any faith in it." Now these were precisely the men whom the 
story of Vinland, if he had been able to quote it, would have 
convinced. The fact that they w^ere not convinced shows that 
they w^ere not told the story ; and if Columbus did not tell it, 
the reason must have been either that he did not know it, or 
did not attach much weight to it. He would have told it if 
only to shorten his own labor in argument ; for in converting 
practical men an ounce of Vinland would have been worth a 
pound of cosmography. Certainly he knew how to deal with 
individual minds, and he could well adapt his arguments to 



THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS. 55 

each one. The way in which he managed his sailors on his 
voyage shows that he sought all sorts of means to command 
confidence. He would have treated his hearers to all the tales 
in the sagas if that would have helped the matter ; the Skrael- 
ings and the unipeds, or one-legged men, of the Norse legends, 
would have been discussed by many a Genoese or Portuguese 
fireside ; and Columbus might never have needed to trouble 
Ferdinand and Isabella with his tale. We iViay safely assume 
that if he knew the traditions about Vinland, they made no 
great impression on his mind. 

Why should they have made much impression .f* The 
Northmen themselves had had five hundred years to forget 
Vinland, and had employed the time pretty effectually for that 
purpose. None of them had continued to go there. As it 
met the ears of Columbus, Vinland may have seemed but one 
more island in the northern seas, and very remote indeed from 
that gorgeous India which Marco Polo had described, and 
w^iich was the subject of so many dreams. More than all, Co- 
lumbus was a man of abstract thought, whose nature it was to 
proceed upon theories, and he fortified himself with the tradi- 
tions of philosophers, authorities of whom the Northmen had 
never heard. That one saying of the cosmographer Aliaco, 
quoting Aristotle, had more weight with one like Columbus 
than a ship's crew of Vikings would have had : " Aristotle 
holds that there is but a narrow sea \_parvuin mare] between 
the western pgints of Spain and the eastern border of India." 
Ferdinand Columbus tells us how much influence that sen- 
tence had with his father; but we should have known it at 
any rate. 

When he finally set sail (August 3, 1492), it was with the 
distinct knowledge that he should have a hard time of it un- 
less Aristotle's "narrow sea" proved very narrow indeed. In- 
stead of extending his knowledge to the sailors and to the 
young adventurers who sailed with him, he must keep them 



56 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

in the dark, must mislead them about the variations of the 
magnetic needle, and must keep a double log-book of his daily 
progress, putting down the actual distance sailed, and then a 
smaller distance to tell the men, in order to prevent them 
from being more homesick than the day before. It was hard 
enough, at any rate. The sea into which they sailed was 
known as the Sea of Darkness — Mare Tenebrosum, the BaJii-- 
al-Zidmat of the Arabians. It had been described by an Arab 
geographer a century before as " a vast and boundless ocean, 
on which ships dare not venture out of sight of land, for even 
if they knew the direction of the winds, they would not know 
whither those winds would carry them, and as there is no in- 
habited country beyond, they would run great risk of being 
lost in mist and vapor." We must remember that at that pe- 
riod the telescope and quadrant were not yet invented, and the 
Copernican system was undiscovered. It was a time when the 
compass itself was so imperfectly known that its variations 
were not recognized ; when Mercator s system of charts, now 
held so essential to the use even of the compass, were not de- 
vised. The instrument was of itself an object of dread among 
the ignorant, as being connected with enchantment. One of 
its Spanish names, britxiila, was derived from brnxo, a sorcerer. 
No one knew the exact shape of the earth ; Columbus 
believed in his third voyage that it was pear-shaped. Some- 
where near the stalk of the pear, he thought, was the Earthly 
Paradise ; somewhere else there was Chaos or. Erebus. In 
sailing over those waters, no one knew what a day might 
bring forth. Above them, it was thought by some, hovered 
the ori2:antic bird known as the roc — familiar to the readers 
of " Sindbad the Sailor " — which was large enough to grasp a 
ship with all its crew and fly away with it into upper air. 
Columbus himself described three mermaids, and reported men 
with tails, men with dogs' heads, and one-eyed men. In the 
history of Peter Martyr, one of those who first recorded the 



THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS. 



57 



discoveries of Columbus, the innocent cetacean called the 
manatee became a half -mythological monster covered with 
knobbed scales, and with a head like an ox ; it could carry 
a dozen men on its back, and was kind and gentle to all 
but Christians, to whom it had an especial aversion. Philo- 




THE VISION OF COLUMBUS. 
[From De Bry.] 



ponus has delineated the manatee, and De Bry has pictured 
the imaginary beings that Columbus saw. 

The old maps peopled the ocean depths with yet more 
frightful and mysterious figures ; and the Arab geographers, 
prohibited by their religion from portraying animals real or 
imaginary, supplied their place by images even more terrific, 
as that of the black and clinched hand of Satan rising above 



58 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

the waves in the guise of an overhanging rock, and ready to 
grasp the daring sailors who profaned the Sea of Darkness 
with their presence. When we think how superstition, gradu- 
ally retiring from the world, still keeps its grasp upon the 
sailors of to-day, we can imagine how it must have ruled the 
ignorant seamen of Columbus. The thoughtful, lonely ways 
of their admiral made him only an object of terror; they 
yielded to him with wonderful submission, but it was the 
homage of fear. The terror reached its climax when they 
entered the vast "Sargasso Sea," a region of Gulf -weed — a 
tract of ocean as large as France, Humboldt says — through 
which they sailed. Here at last, they thought, was the home 
of all the monsters depicted in the charts, who might at any 
moment rear their distorted forms from the snaky sea-weed, 

" Like demons' endlong tresses, they sailed through." 

At the very best, they said, it was an inundated land {ticrras 
anegadas) — probably the fabled sunken island Atlantis, of which 
they had heard ; whose slime, tradition said, made it impossi- 
ble to explore that sea, and on whose submerged shallows 
they might at any time be hopelessly swamped or entangled. 
" Are there no graves at home," they asked each other, accord- 
ing to Herrera, " that we should be brought here to die T' 
The trade -winds, afterwards called by the friars "winds of 
mercy," because they aided in the discovery of the New 
World, were only winds of despair to the sailors. They be- 
lieved that the ships were sailing down an inclined slope, and 
that to return would be impossible, since it blew always from 
home. There was little to do in the way of trimming sails, 
for they sailed almost on a parallel of latitude from the Ca- 
naries to the Bahamas. Their severest labor was in pumping 
out the leaky ships. The young adventurers remained listless- 
ly on deck, or played the then fashionable game of primero, 



THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS. 59 

and heard incredulously the daily reports told by Columbus 
of the rate of sailing. They would have been still more in- 
credulous had they known the truth. " They sighed and 
wept," Herrera says, " and every hour seemed like a year." 

The same Spanish annalist compares Columbus to St. 
Christopher in the legend bearing the infant Christ across 
the stream on his shoulders ; and the explorer was often 
painted in that character in those days. But the weight that 
Columbus had to bear up was a wearisome and unworthy load. 
Sometimes they plotted to throw him overboard by a manoeu- 
vre {con disimitlacion, Herrera says), intending to say that he 
fell in while star-gazing. But he, according to Peter Martyr, 
dealt with them now by winning words, now by encouraging 
their hopes {dlandis modo verbis, ampla spe modd). If they 
thought they saw land, he encouraged them to sing an an- 
them ; when it proved to be but cloud, he held out the hope 
of land to-morrow. They had sailed August 3, 1492, and 
when they had been out two months (October 3d), he refused 
to beat about in search of land, though he thought they were 
near it, but he would press straight through to the Indies. 
Sometimes there came a contrary wind, and Columbus was 
cheered by it, for it would convince his men that the wind 
did not always blow one way, and that by patient waiting 
they could yet return to Spain. 

As the days went on, the signs of land increased, but very 
slowly. When we think of the intense impatience of the pas- 
sengers on an ocean steamer after they have been ten long 
days on the water, even though they know precisely where 
they are, and where they are going, and that they are driven 
by mechanical forces stronger than winds or waves, we can 
imagine something of the feelings of Columbus and his crew 
as the third month wore on. Still there was no sign of hope 
but a pelican to-day and a crab to-morrow; or a drizzling 
rain without wind — a combination which was supposed to in- 



6o HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

dicate nearness to the shore. There has scarcely been a mo- 
ment in the history of the race more full of solemn conse- 
quences than that evening hour when, after finding a carved 
stick and a hawthorn branch, Columbus watched from the 
deck in the momentary expectation of some glimpse of land. • 
The first shore light is a signal of success and triumph to 
sailors who cross the Atlantic every three weeks. What then 
was it to the patient commander who was looking for the first 
gleam from an unknown world } 

The picturesque old tale can never be told in better words 
than those in which the chronicler Herrera narrates it: "And 
Christopher Columbus, being now sure that he was not far 
off, as the night came on, after singing the ' Salve Regina,' 
as is usual with mariners, addressed them all and said that 
since God had given them grace to make so long a voyage 
in safety, and since the signs of land were becoming steadily 
more frequent, he would beg them to keep watch all night. 
And they knew well that the first chapter of the orders that 
he had issued to them on leaving Castile provided that after 
sailing seven hundred leagues without making land, they should 
only sail thenceforth from the following midnight to the next 
day ; and that they should pass that time in prayer, because 
he trusted in God that during that night they should discover 
land. And that besides the ten thousand maravedis that their 
Highnesses had promised to him who should make the first 
discovery, he would give, for his part, a velvet jerkin." 

It seems like putting some confusion into men's minds to 
set them thinking at one and the same time of a new world 
and a velvet jerkin ; but, after all, the prize was never awarded, 
for Columbus himself was the victor. The vessels of those 
days had often a high structure like a castle at bow and stern 
— whence our word forecastle for the forward part of the ship 
— and we can fancy the sailors and young adventurers watch- 
ing from one of these while Columbus watched from the other. 



THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS. 



6l 



The admiral had the sharpest eyes or the highest outlook, and 
that night he saw a light which seemed to move on the dim 
horizon. He called to him Pedro Gutierrez, who saw it at 
once; he called Roderigo- Sanchez, who could not see it for 
some time ; but at last all three perceived it beyond doubt. 
" It appeared like a candle that was raised and lowered. The 




THE LANDING AT GUANAHANI. 






admiral did not doubt its being a real light or its being on 
land ; and so it was : it was borne by people who were going 
from one cottage to another." " He saw that light in the 
midst of darkness," adds the devout Herrera, " which symbol- 
ized the spirit and light which were to be introduced among 
these savaa^es." This sioht was seen at about ten o'clock in 
the evening; and at two o'clock in the morning land was act- 
ually seen from the Pinta, the foremost vessel, by a sailor, 



62 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Rodrigo de Triana, who, poor fellow, never got the promised 
reward, and, as tradition says, went to Africa and became a 
Mohammedan in despair. 

The landing of Columbus has been commemorated by the 
fine design of Turner, engraved in Rogers's poems. Columbus 
wore complete armor, with crimson over it, and carried in his 
hand the Spanish flag, with its ominous hues of gold and 
blood ; his captains bore each a banner with a green cross, 
and the initials F. and Y. for " Ferdinand " and " Ysabel," sur- 
mounted by their respective crowns. They fell upon their 
knees ; they chanted the " Te Deum," and then with due legal 
formalities took possession of the island in behalf of the Span- 
ish sovereigns. It was the island Guanahani, which Colum- 
bus rechristened San Salvador, but whose precise identity has 
always been a little doubtful. Navarrete identified it with 
Turk's Island ; Humboldt and Irving with Cat Island ; Cap- 
tain Becher, of the English Hydrographic Office, wrote a book 
to prove that it was Catling Island ; while Captain Fox and 
Harrisse — the latest authority — believe it to have been Ack- 
lin's Key. It is a curious fact that the island which made the 
New World a certainty should itself remain uncertain of iden- 
tification for four hundred years. 

With the glory and beauty of that entrance of European 
civilization on the American continent there came also the 
shame. Columbus saw and described the innocent happiness 
of the natives. They were no wild savages, no cruel barba- 
rians. They had good faces, he says ; they neither carried nor 
understood weapons, not even swords ; they were generous and 
courteous ; " very gentle, without knowing what evil is, without 
killing, without stealing " {muy maiisos, y sin saber que sea mal, 
ni niatar a otros, ni prender). They were poor, but their 
houses were clean ; and they had in them certain statues in 
female form, and certain heads in the shape of masks well 
executed. " I do not know," he says, in Navarrete's account, 



THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS. 63 

"whether these are employed for adornment or worship" {per 
hermosura 6 adoran). The remains of Aztec and Maya civiH- 
zation seem less exceptional, when we find among these first- 
seen aborigines the traces of a feeling for art. 

Columbus seems to have begun with that peculiar mixture 
of kindness and contempt which the best among civilized men 
are apt to show towards savages. " Because," he said, " they 
showed much kindliness for us, and because I knew that they 
would be more easily made Christians through love than fear, 
I gave to some of them some colored caps, and some strings 
of glass beads for their necks, and many other trifles, with 
which they were delighted, and were so entirely ours that it 
was a marvel to see." There is a certain disproportion here 
between the motive and the action. These innocent savages 
gave him a new world for Castile and Leon, and he gave them 
some glass beads and little red caps. If this had been the 
worst of the bargain it would have been no great matter. The 
tragedy begins when we find this same high-minded admiral 
writing home to their Spanish Majesties in his very first letter 
that he shall be able to supply them with all the gold they 
need, with spices, cotton, mastic, aloes, rhubarb, cinnamon, and 
slaves ; " slaves, as many of these idolators as their Highnesses 
shall command to be shipped" {esclavos quanto mandaran car- 
gar y scran de los ydolaircs). Thus ended the visions of those 
simple natives who, when the Europeans first arrived, had run 
from house to house, crying aloud, " Come, come and see the 
people from heaven " {la gente del cield). Some of them lived 
to suspect that the bearded visitors had quite a different 
origin. 

But Columbus shared the cruel prejudices of his age ; he 
only rose above its scientific ignorance. That was a fine an- 
swer made by him when asked, in the council called by King 
Ferdinand, how he knew that the western limit of the Atlan- 
tic was formed by the coasts of Asia. '' If indeed," said he, 



64 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

" the Atlantic has other Hmits in that direction than the lands 
of Asia, it is no less necessary that they should be discovered, 
and I will discover them." He probably died without the 
knowledge that he had found a new continent, but this answer 
shows the true spirit of the great captain. Columbus has been 
the subject of much discussion. He has been glorified into 
something like sainthood by such Roman Catholic eulogists 
as Roselly de Lorges, and has been attacked with merciless 
vituperation by such writers as Goodrich ; but time does not 
easily dim the essential greatness of the man. Through him 
the Old and New worlds were linked together for good or 
for evil, and once united, they never could be separated. 

There was another Spanish voyager whose name will al- 
ways be closely joined with that of Columbus, and who is still 
regarded by many persons as having unjustly defrauded his 
greater predecessor, inasmuch as it was he, not Columbus, who 
gave his name to the New World. Unlike Columbus, Amerigo 
Vespucci was never imprisoned, enchained, or impoverished, 
and was thus perhaps the happier of the two during his life, 
though Columbus himself wrote of him : " Fortune has been 
adverse to him as she has to many others." Since his death 
his fate has been reversed, and he has suffered far more than 
Columbus at the hands of posterity. The very fact that his 
name was applied to the American continent caused many to 
regard him as but a base and malignant man. It was believed, 
moreover, down to the time when Irving wrote, that Vespucci's 
alleged voyage of 1497 was a fabrication, and that he did not 
really reach the mainland of South America until 1499, where- 
as Columbus 'reached it the year before. But the elaborate 
works of Varnhagen have changed the opinion of scholars on 
this point, and it is now believed that Vespucci reached the 
southern half of the continent in the same year when Cabot 
first reached the northern. If this be so, it turns out not to 
be quite so unjust, after all, that his name should have been 



THE SPANISH DISCO VERERS. 65 

given to the continent, for he really was the first to attain and 
describe it definitely, although it may justly be said that after 
Columbus had reached the outlying islands all else was but 
a question of time. 

The works of Varnhagen, published partly at Lima and 
partly at Vienna and Paris, are costly and elaborate ; they 
include the minutest investigations as to the text of all the 
letters, proved or reported, of Vespucci, and the most careful 
investigation of all internal evidence bearing on the authen- 
ticity of those documents. His conclusion is that Vespucci's 
first voyage was made in 1497-8, as he claimed; that he 
reached Honduras, and coasted all along the shores of Yu- 
catan, of the Gulf of Mexico, and of Florida, thus proving 
Cuba to be an island, when Columbus still held it to be 
part of the mainland ; and that he had reached Cape Canav- 
eral before he quitted the shores and set sail for Portugal. 
The land which he discovered he called " The Land of the 
Holy Cross," and he believed it to be a promontory of Asia. 

His discoveries attracted much attention in Germany, and 
it was a geographer named Waldsee-MUUer who first printed, 
in 1507, one of his letters at the little town of St. Die, in 
Lorraine. This same author, believing the " Land of the Holy 
Cross " to be a new quarter of the globe discovered by Ves- 
pucci {alia quarta pars per Aniericanmn Vespiuimn . . . invenla), 
suggested, in a book called " Cosmographice Introductio," and 
published in 1507, the year after the death of Columbus, that 
this new land should be named for Americus, since Europe 
and Asia had women's names {Amerigen quasi Americi terrain 
sive Amei'icaju dicendam cum et Europa et Asia a nmlieribus 
sua sortita sint nomind). It is curious to read this sentence in 
the quaint clear type of that little book, copies of which may 
be found in the Harvard College library, and in other Ameri- 
can collections, and to think that every corner of this vast 
double continent now owes its name to what was perhaps a 

5 



66 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



random suggestion of one obscure German. The use of the 
title gradually spread, after this suggestion, and apparently be- 
cause it pleased the public ear ; but no two geographers agreed 




DA VINCI S MAPPEMONDE. 
[By permission of the Society of Antiquaries.] 



as to the shape of the land it represented. Indeed, Waldsee- 
Miiller, a man who was not content with one hard name for 
himself, but must needs have two — being called in Latin Hy- 
lacomylus — seems not to have been quite sure what name the 
newly discovered lands should have, after all. Six years after 
he had suggested the name America, he printed (in 15 13) for 
an edition of Ptolemy a chart called " Tabula Terre Nove," 
on which the name of America does not appear, but there is 
represented a southern continent called " Terra Incognita," 
with an express inscription saying that it was discovered by 
Columbus. This shows in what an uncertain way the bap- 



THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS. 



67 



tism was given. The earliest manuscript map yet known to 
bear the name " America " is in a collection of drawings by- 
Leonardo da Vinci, now preserved in England, this being prob- 
ably made in 15 13-14. It was published in the London Arck- 
(Eologia, and a portion of it is here reproduced. The earliest 
engraved map bearing the name was made at Vienna in 1520. 
The globe of Johann Schoner, also made in 1520, and still 
preserved at Nuremberg, calls what is now Brazil, " America 
sive [or] Brazilia," thus doubtfully recognizing the new name ; 
and it gives what is now known to be the northern half of 
the continent as a separate island under the name of Cuba. 
It was many years before the whole was correctly figured and 
comprehended under one name. Every geographer of those 
days distributed the supposed islands or continents of the New 
World as if he had thrown them from a dice-box; and the 




A CHART OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 



68 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



royal personages who received gold and slaves from these new 
regions generally cared very little to know the particulars 
about them. The young, the ardent, and the reckless sought 
them for adventure ; but their vague and barbarous wonders 
seemed to princes and statesmen very secondary matters com- 
pared with their own intrigues and treaties and royal mar- 
riages and endless wars. Vespucci himself may not have 




VASCO NUNEZ DE BALBOA. 



known when his name was first used for the baptism of his 
supposed discoveries. He was evidently one of those who 
have more greatness thrust upon them than they have ever 
claimed for themselves. 

Another of the great Spanish explorers was one who left 
Hispaniola, it is said, to avoid his creditors, and then left the 
world his debtor in Darien. Vasco Nuiiez de Balboa deserves 
to be remembered as one who at least tried to govern the 



THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS. 



69 



Indians with humanity; yet even he could not resist putting 
them to the torture, by his own confession {dando a tinos 
tormentd), in order to discover gold. But he will be better 
remembered as the first civilized discoverer of the ocean 
that covers one -half the surface of the globe. Going forty 
leagues from Darien to visit an Indian chief named Comogre, 
the Spaniards received a sumptuous present of gold, and as 
they were quarrelling about it, the eldest son of the chief 
grew indignant at what he thought their childishness. Dash- 
ing the scales, gold and all, to the ground, he told them that 
he could show them a country rich enough in gold to satisfy 
all their greediness ; that it lay by a sea on which there were 
ships almost as large as theirs, and that he could guide them 
thither if they had the courage. " Our captains," says Peter 
Martyr, " marvelling at the oration of this naked young man, 
pondered in their minds, and earnestly considered these things." 
At a later time Balboa not only considered, but acted, and 
with one hundred and ninety Spaniards, besides slaves and 
hounds, he fought his way through forests and over moun- 
tains southward. Coming near the mountain-top whence he 
might expect, as the Indians had assured him, to behold the 
sea, he bade his men sit upon the ground, that he alone might 
see it first. Then he looked upon it, 

" Silent upon a peak in Darien." 

Before him rolled " the Sea of the South," as it was then 
called {la Mar del Sur), it lying southward of the isthmus 
wh^re he stood — as any map will show — and its vast northern 
sweep not yet being known. This was on September 25, 
15 13. On his knees Balboa thanked God for the glory of 
that moment ; then called his men, and after they also had 
given thanks, he addressed them, reminding them of what the 
naked prince had said, and pointing out that as the promise 



70 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

of the southern sea had been fulfilled, so might also that of 
the kingdom of gold — as it was, indeed, fulfilled long after in 
the discovery of Peru by Pizarro, who was one of his com- 
panions. Then they sang the " Te Deum Laudamus," and a 
notary drew up a list of all those who were present, sixty- 
seven in all, that it might be known who had joined in the 
great achievement. Then he took formal possession of the 
sea and all that was ia it in behalf of Spain ; he cut down 
trees, made crosses, and carved upon the tree trunks the names 
of Spanish kings. Descending to the sea, some days later, 
with his men, he entered it, with his sword on, and standing 
up to his thighs in the water, declared that he would defend 
it against all comers as a possession of the throne of Spain. 
Meanwhile some of his men found two Indian canoes, and for 
the first time floated on that unknown sea. To Balboa and 
his companions it was but a new avenue of conquest ; and 
Peter Martyr compares him to Hannibal showing Italy to his 
soldiers {ingentcs opes sociis pollicetur). But to us, who think 
of what that discovery was, it has a grandeur second only to 
the moment when Columbus saw the light upon the shore. 
Columbus discovered what he thought was India, but Balboa 
proved that half the width of the globe still separated him 
from India. Columbus discovered a new land, but Balboa a 
new sea. Seven years later (1520), Magellan also reached it 
by sailing southward and passing through the straits that bear 
his name, giving to the great ocean the name of Pacific, from 
the serene weather which met him on his voyage. 

I must not omit to mention one who was the first Euro- 
pean visitor of Florida, except as Vespucci and others had 
traced the outline of its shores. Yet Ponce de Leon made 
himself immortal, not, like Columbus, by what he dreamed 
and discovered, but by what he dreamed and never found. 
Even to have gone in search of the Fountain of Youth was 
an event that so arrested the human imagination as to have 



THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS. 



71 



thrown a sort of halo around a man who certainly never 
reached that goal. The story was first heard among the In- 
dians of Cuba and Hispaniola, that on the island of Bimini, 
one of the Lucayos, there was a fountain in which aged men 
by bathing could renew 
their youth. The old Eng- 
lish translation of Peter 
Martyr describes this island 
as one "in the which there 
is a continual spring of run- 
ning water of such marvel- 
lous virtue that, the water 
thereof being drunk, perhaps 
with some diet, maketh old 
men young." Others added 
that on a neighboring shore 
there was a river of the 
same magical powers — a 
river believed by many to 
be the Jordan. With these 
visions in his mind, Ponce 

de Leon, sailing in command of three brigantines from Porto 
Rico, where he had been Governor, touched the mainland, 
in the year 15 12, without knowing that he had arrived at it. 
First seeing it on Easter Sunday — a day which the Spaniards 
called Pascua Florida, or " Flowery Easter " — he gave this 
name to the newly discovered shore. He fancied it to be an 
island whose luxuriant beauty seemed to merit this glowing- 
name — the Indian name having been Cantio. He explored 
its coast, landed near what is now called St. Augustine, then 
returned home, and on the way delegated one of his captains, 
Juan Perez, to seek the island of Bimini, and to search for 
the Fountain of Youth upon it. He reached the island, but 
achieved nothing more. 




PONCE DE LEON. 



72 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Long after these days, Herrera tells us, both Indians and 
Spaniards used to bathe themselves in the rivers and lakes of 
all that region, hoping to find the enchanted waters. Ponce 
de Leon once again visited his supposed island, and was mor- 
tally wounded by Indians on its shores. He never found the 
Fountain of Youth, but he found Florida ; and for the multi- 
tudes who now retreat from the Northern winter to that blos- 
soming region, it may seem that his early dreams were not 
so unfounded after all. 

The conquest of Mexico by Cortez revived anew the zeal 
of Spanish adventure, and a new expedition to Florida was or- 
ganized, which led ultimately to a new discovery — that of the 
first land route across the width, though not across the largest 
width, of North America. Alvar Nuiiez, conlmonly called Ca- 
beza de Vaca, sailed from Spain to Florida, in 1527, as treas- 
urer of an armada, or armed fleet. They probably landed at 
what is now called Charlotte Harbor, in Florida, where Cabeza 
de Vaca and others left their ships and went into the interior 
as far as what is now Alabama. Then they were driven back 
in confusion, and reached the sea in utter destitution and help- 
lessness. They wished to build ships and to get away ; but 
they had neither knowledge nor tools nor iron nor forge nor 
tow nor resin nor rigging. Yet they made a bellows out of 
deer-skins, and saws out of stirrups, resin from pine-trees, sails 
from their shirts, and ropes from palmetto leaves and from the 
hair of their horses' tails. Out of the skins of the lesfs of 
horses, taken off whole, and tanned, they made bottles to carry 
water. At last they made three boats, living on horse-meat 
until these were ready. Then they set sail, were shipwrecked 
again and again, went through all sorts of sorrows, lived on 
half a handful of raw maize a day for each person, and were 
so exhausted that at one time all but Cabeza de Vaca be- 
came unconscious, and were restored to life by being thrown 
into the water on the capsizing of the boat — a tale which, it is 



THE SPANISH DISCO VERERS. 73 

thought, may have suggested to Coleridge his picture of the 
dead sailors coming to life in the " Ancient Mariner." 

During this voyage of thirty days along the coast they 
passed a place where a great fresh -water river ran into the 
sea, and they dipped up fresh water to drink ; this has been 
supposed to be the Mississippi, and this to have been its first 
discovery by white men. Cabeza de Vaca must at any rate 
have reached the Lower Mississippi before De Soto, and have 
penetrated the northern part of Mexico before Cortez, for he 
traversed the continent ; and after eight years of wandering, 
during which he saw many novel wonders, including the buf- 
falo, he found himself with three surviving companions at the 
Spanish settlements on the Gulf of California, near the river 
Culiacan. The narrative of Cabeza de Vaca has been trans- 
lated in full by Buckingham Smith, and no single account of 
Spanish adventure combines so many amazing incidents. His 
pictures of the country traversed are accurate and complete ; 
and he had every conceivable experience with the Indians. 
He was a slave to tribes which kept white captives in the 
most abject bondage, and every day put arrows to their breasts 
by way of threat for the morrow. And he encountered other 
tribes which brought all their food to the white men to be 
breathed upon before they ate it ; tribes which accompanied 
their visitors by thousands as a guard of honor in their march 
through the country ; and tribes where the people fetched all 
the goods from their houses, and laid them before the strangers 
passing by, praying them, as visitors from heaven, to accept 
their choicest possessions. Yet all these tales are combined 
with descriptions so minute and occurrences so probable that 
the main narrative must be accepted for truth, though it is 
impossible to tell precisely where belief should begin or end. 

Such were some of the early Spanish discoveries. I pass 
by the romantic adventures of Cortez and Pizarro ; they were 
not discoveries, but rather conquests, and their conquests lay 



74 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

almost wholly beyond the borders of the region now known 
as the United States of America. There is nothing more 
picturesque in the early history of any country than the period 
of Spanish adventure; nor is there anything sadder than the 
reverse of the picture, when we consider the wrongs endured 
by the native population. Those gentle races whom Colum- 
bus found so hospitable and so harmless were soon crushed 
by the invaders, and the more powerful tribes of the main- 
land fared no better. Weapons, tortures, fire, and even blood- 
hounds fiercer than wild beasts were used against them. Span- 
ish writers delight to describe the scars and wounds of these 
powerful animals, some of which were so highly esteemed as 
to be rated as soldiers under their own names, receiving their 
full allowance of food as such, the brute being almost as cruel 
and formidable as a man. For the credit of civilization and 
Christianity it is to be remembered that the same nation and 
faith which furnished the persecutors supplied also the defend- 
ers and the narrators ; and most of what we know of the 
wrongs of the natives comes through the protests, not always 
unavailing, of the noble Las Casas. This good bishop un- 
ceasingly urged upon the Spanish rulers a policy of mercy. 
He secured milder laws, and, as bishop, even refused the sac- 
raments at one time to those who reduced the Indians to 
slavery. But it was soon plain that to carry out this policy 
would be practically to abolish the sacraments, and so neither 
Church nor State sustained him. He has left us the imperish- 
able record of the atrocities he could not repress. " With mine 
own eyes," he says, " I saw kingdoms as full of people as hives 
are of bees, and now where are they "^ . . . Almost all have 
perished. The innocent blood which they had shed cried out 
for vengeance ; the sighs, the tears, of so many victims went 
up to God." 



p 



IV. 

THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN. 

ROBABLY no single class of men ever made a greater 
change in the fortunes of mankind than was brought 
about by the great English seamen of the sixteenth century. 
Some of them were slave-traders, others were smugglers, almost 
all were lawless men in a lawless age; but the result of their 
daring expeditions was to alter the destiny of the American 
continent, and therefore the career of the human race. 

In the year 1500, Spain, with Portugal, was the undisputed 
master of the New World. At the present time neither Spain 
nor Portugal owns a foot of land upon the main continent of 
North or South America. The destiny of the whole West- 
ern world has been changed ; and throughout almost all the 
northern half of it the lanoruao;e, the institutions, the habits 
have been utterly transformed. At the time when Europe 
was first stirred by the gold and the glory brought from the 
newly discovered America, it was only Spain, and in a small 
degree Portugal, that reaped the harvest. These were then 
the two great maritime and colonizing powers of Europe ; and 
two bulls from Pope Alexander VI., in 1593, had permitted 
them to divide between them any newly discovered portions of 
the globe. Under this authority Portugal was finally permitted 
to keep Brazil — which had been first colonized by Portuguese 
— while Spain claimed all the rest of the continent. To this 
day the results of that mutual distribution are plainly to be seen 



76 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

in South America. Brazil speaks Portuguese, while almost all 
the rest of South America, with Mexico, speaks Spanish. But 
beyond Mexico, through all the vast length and breadth of 
North America, English is the prevailing and ofhcial language. 
Throughout that region, instead of the Latin race, the Ger- 
manic prevails ; instead of the Roman Catholic faith, the Prot- 
estant preponderates. There has not been in the history of 
the w^orld a profounder change in the current of human events. 
The most remarkable circumstance of all is, that this change 
was substantially made in a single century (the sixteenth), and 
was made mainly through a single class of men — the old Eng- 
lish seamen. They it was who broke the power of Spain, and 
changed the future destinies of America. 

Other nations doubtless co-operated. Italy, especially, con- 
tained the great intellectual and cultivated race in that age, 
and furnished both Spain and Portugal again and again with 
ships, mathematical instruments, captains, crews, and even 
bankers' credits. Spain sent across the Atlantic ocean Colum- 
bus and Amerigo Vespucci, both Italians ; France sent Verraz- 
zano, an Italian ; England sent Cabot, an Italian by citizensliip 
and probably by birth and blood. For centuries the descend- 
ants of the Northmen confined their voyages to the shores 
of Western Europe ; they knew less even of the Mediterranean 
than their Viking ancestors; but London had Italian mer- 
'chants, and Bristol had Italian sailors, and it is to these that 
we owe the pioneer explorations of the Cabots. We must 
begin with these, for on these rested, in the first place, all the 
claims of England to the North American coast. 

There is a great contrast between the ample knowledge 
that we have about the career of Columbus and the scanty and 
contradictory information left to us in regard to the Cabots. 
There is scarcely a fact about them or their voyages which is 
known with complete accuracy. We do not know past ques- 
tion their nationality or their birthdays, or the dates of their 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN. 



77 



voyages ; nor do we always know by which of the family those 
^ expeditions were made. John Cabot was long regarded as a 
Genoese who came to England to reside ; yet it has been 
thought possible that he was an Englishman who was merely 
naturalized in V^enice in 1476. Sebastian Cabot is now pretty 
well known to have been born in Venice, yet some contem- 
porary authorities describe 
him as a native of Bristol. 
He received a patent from 
the King in 1496 — he and 
his father and brothers — 
to make discoveries ; but 
the only engraved map 
bearing his name claims 
that he had already found 
North America two years 
before that date. "John 
Cabot, a Venetian, and 
Sebastian Cabot, his son, 
discovered this region, for- 
merly unknown, in the 
year 1494, on the 24th 
day of June, at the fifth 
hour." This date appears 

both in the Latin and Spanish inscriptions on the unique 
copy of this map in the National Library at Paris ; the map 
itself having been engraved in 1544, but only having come to 
light in 1843. Its authenticity has been fully discussed by M. 
D'Avezac, who believes in it, and by Dr. J. G. Kohl and Mr. 
Charles Deane, who reject it. Mr. R. H. Major, of the British 
Museum, has made the ingenious suggestion that the date, 
which is in Roman letters, was originally written by Cabot 
thus, MCCCCXCVIL, and that the V, being carelessly writ- 
ten, passed for II, so that the transcriber wrote 1494 instead 




SEBASTIAN CABOT, BY HOLBEIN. 



78 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

of 1497. To add to the confusion, there is evidence in the 
Spanish State papers that would, if credited, carry back the 
first voyages of the Cabots to an earlier date than even that 
of Columbus, The Spanish envoy in England wrote to the 
sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella (July 25, 1498), that the 
people of Bristol had been annually sending ships for seven 
years " in search of the island Brazil and the seven cities, ac- 
cording to the fancy of that Italian Cabot," This would 
imply that his first expedition took place in 1491. 

But it is quite certain that this carries back the date too 
far; it is almost certain, also, that it was the example of Co- 
lumbus which aroused Sebastian Cabot to action. In one of 
the few sentences positively attributed to him, though by an 
unknown witness, he says of the first voyage of Columbus : 
" In that time when news was brought that Don Christopher 
Colonus, Genoese, had discovered the coasts of Indies, whereof 
was great talk in all the court of King Henry VII., who then 
reigned, insomuch that all men, with great admiration, affirmed 
it to be a thing more divine than human to sail by the West 
unto the East, where spices grow, by a way that was never 
known before ; by this fame and report there increased in my 
heart a great flame of desire to attempt some notable thing; 
and understanding by the sphere (globe) that if I should sail 
by way of the north-west I should by a shorter track come 
into India, I imparted my ideas to the King." 

It is altogether probable that the map of Sebastian Cabot 
gives us an authentic basis of knowledge in regard to the 
points visited by him, even if the date assigned is not quite 
trustworthy. His " Prima Vista," or point first seen — what 
sailors call landfall — was in that case Cape Breton. He sailed 
along Prince Edward Island, then known as the Isle of St. 
John, and along the Gulf of St. Lawrence, perhaps beyond 
the site where Quebec now stands. He then sailed eastward 
to Newfoundland, which he described as consisting of many 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN. 



79 



islands; then southward to the Chesapeake River, and then 
homeward. He saw first the bleakest and most rugged part 
of the North American coast. If he saw it in 1494, he was 
its first known civilized discoverer; if he saw it in 1497, it is 
possible that Amerigo Vespucci saw Florida in that same 
year, but very likely at a later period of the year. 

At any rate, it is probable that in 1497 Sebastian Cabot 
and his father sailed with five ships, furnished at their own 
cost, but upon the condition that they should pay the King 
one-fifth of all profits. They were authorized by the King to 




" Terrant hatic olim nohis claiisatn nperiiit foannis Cabolus Vevetus, nee no)i 
Seh.istianus Caboius eius fi-lius anno ah orhe redetnHn 14114. die vera 24 ynnii horci 
5 S}ib dilucolo, qnatn terrain />rim>nn visiint ahpellarunt et insiilain quandam ei 
of>t>osHam Insidatn divi Jitatinis nomiiinrunt, qui/>/>e qiiif Solemni die festo divi 
yoannis afrerta fnit . . . Diversis g'eneri/jtis pisciiiin abundat, horuni autent max- 
ima copia est quos vulgits Baccalaos {Morni) appellaty 



"Sebastian Cabot, Captain and Pilot Major of His Sacred Imperial Majesty, 
the Emperor Don Carlos the 5th of this name, and King our Lord, made this figure 
extended in plane in the year of the birth of our Saviour Jesus Christ, 1544." 



8o HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

sail " to all parts, countries, and seas of the East, of the West, 
and of the North, under our banners and ensigns . . . upon 
their own proper costs and charges, to seek out, discover, and 
find whatsoever Isles, Countries, Regions, or Provinces of the 
Heathen and Infidels whatsoever they be, and in whatsoever 
part of the world, which before this time have been unknown 
to Christians." They were also permitted, in the royal phrase, 
" to set up our banners and ensigns in every village, town, 
castle, isle, or mainland of them newly found, and to subdue, 
occupy, and possess them." In addition to all other uncer- 
tainties, the authorities differ greatly as to whether it was John 
or Sebastian who should have the honor of the great discov- 
eries made by this expedition. Hakluyt, who compiled the 
well-known collection of voyages, and who was born a few 
years before Sebastian Cabot's death, and was the best -in- 
formed Englishman of his time as to nautical matters, declares 
that " a great part of this continent as well as of the islands 
was first discovered for the King of England by Sebastian 
Gabote, an Englishman, born in Bristow, son of John Gabote, in 
1496." Elsewhere he says: "Columbus first saw the firme land 
August I, 1498, but Gabote made his great discovery in 1496." 
On the other hand, there is an entry in the Milan archives 
(August, 1497): "Some months ago his Majesty Henry VII. 
sent out a Venetian, who is a very good mariner, has good 
skill in discovering new islands, and he has returned safe, and 
has found two very large and fertile new islands, having like- 
wise discovered the seven cities, 400 leagues from England, 
on the western passage." This names neither John nor Se- 
bastian. But there is another letter in the Milan archives, 
from Lorenzo Pasqualigo to his brother (dated August 23, 
1497), which might seem to settle the matter: 

" This Venetian of ours, who went with a ship from Bristol in quest of new 
islands, is returned, and says that seven hundred leagues hence he discovered 
' terra firma,' which is the territory of the Grand Cham. He coasted for three 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN. 8 1 

hundred leagues, and landed. He saw no human being whatsoever; but he 
has brought hither to the King certain snares which had been set to catch 
game, and a needle for making nets ; he also found some felled trees ; where- 
fore he supposed there were inhabitants, and returned to his ship in alarm. 

" He was three months on the voyage, it is quite certain ; and coming back, 
he saw two islands to starboard, but would not land, time being precious, as 
he was short of provisions. The King is much pleased with this intelligence. 
He says that the tides are slack, and do not flow as they do here. The King 
has promised that in the spring he shall have ten ships, armed according to 
his own fancy ; and at his request he has conceded to him all the prisoners, 
except such as are confined for high-treason, to man them with. He has also 
given him money wherewith to amuse himself till then ; and he is now at 
Bristol with his wife, who is a Venetian woman, and with his sons. His name 
is Zuan Cabot, and they call him the great admiral. Vast honor is paid him, 
and he dresses in silk ; and these English run after him like mad people, so 
that he can enlist as many of them as he pleases, and a number of our own 
rogues besides. 

"The discoverer of these places planted on his new-found land a large 
cross, with one fiag of England, and another of St. Mark, by reason of his 
being a Venetian, so that our banner has floated very far afield." 

But the librarian of the Bristol public library, Mr. Nicholls, 
who has compiled a biography of Sebastian Cabot, points out 
that we have among the privy purse expenses of Henry VII. 
some entries that quite change this story. We have there 
recorded the very sum paid to John Cabot (August lo, 1497): 
"To him who found the new isle, ,^io." Fifty dollars was 
certainly a moderate price to pay for the whole continent of 
North America, and certainly not sufficient to keep " the great 
admiral " and his Venetian wife in silk dresses from August 
to the following spring. This evident exaggeration throws 
some doubt over the whole tone of Signor Pasqualigo's narra- 
tive ; yet it leaves the main facts untouched. The most prob- 
able explanation of the whole contradiction would seem to be 
"that John Cabot, the father, was the leader in the "great voy- 
age," and won most fame at the time, but that his death, which 
happened soon after, left his son Sebastian in possession of 
the field, after which time Sebastian's later voyages gave most 
of the laurels to his name. At any rate, they belonged to the 

6 



82 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

name of Cabot, and this will probably always rank next to 
that of Columbus in popular renown. 

On the death of his father, in 1498, Sebastian Cabot was 
left, according to Peter Martyr, very rich and full of ambition 
{riccJiissiino et di gra^tde aninid). A patent for another voyage 
had just been given to the father, and the son made use of it, 
though some doubt still exists about the leadership of this 
expedition, and Mr. Deane thinks that John Cabot had not 
yet died, but went in command of it. Cabot went expressly, 
Gomara says, "to know what manner of lands these Indies 
were to inhabit." The King's privy purse account shows that 
bounties were given to those who enlisted under Cabot. " A 
reward of ^2 to J as. Carter for going to the new Isle, also to 
Thos. Bradley and Launcelot Thirkill, going to the new Isle 
^30." It would be curious to know if these sums represent 
the comparative value of the recruits ; at any rate, besides two 
pounds' worth of Carters and thirty pounds' worth of Bradleys 
and Thirkills — these being respectable merchants — Cabot had 
a liberal supply of men upon whose heads no bounty was set, 
unless to pay him for removing them. Perkin Warbeck's in- 
surrection had lately been suppressed, and had filled the jails ; 
and the Venetian calendar tells us that " the King gave Cabot 
the sweepings of the prisons." It was poor material out of 
which to make colonists, as Captain John Smith discovered 
more than a century later. 

What with jail -birds and others, Cabot took with him in 
1498 three hundred men, and sailed past Iceland, or Island, 
as it was then called, a region well known to Bristol (or Bris- 
tow) men, and not likely to frighten his rather untrustworthy 
ship's company. Then he sailed for Labrador, which he called 
" La Tierra de los Baccalaos," or, briefly, " The Baccalaos " — 
this word meaning simply cod-fish. He said that he found 
such abundance of this fish as to hinder the sailing of his 
ships ; that he found seals and salmon abundant in the rivers 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN. 83 

and bays, and bears which phinged into the water and caught 
these fish. He described herds of reindeer, and men Hke Es- 
kimo, but he could find no passage to India among the 
" islands." This is what they were habitually called in those 
days, though the King more guardedly described the new re- 
gion in his patent as " the said Londe [land] or Isles." Cabot 
left some colonists on the bleak shores of Labrador or New- 
foundland, then returned and took the poor fellows on board 
again ; he sailed south, following the coast as far as Florida, 
but not a man would go ashore to found another colony, and 
he returned to England with increased fame but little profit. 
Later he explored Hudson Bay, looking vainly for a passage, 
while the King was still giving bounties to those who went 
to " the new island," or sometimes to " the Newfounded island," 
which shows how easily the name Newfoundland came to be 
fixed upon one part of the region explored. 

Sebastian Cabot was certainly in one sense the discoverer 
of America: it was he who first made sure that it was a whol- 
ly new and unknown continent. In his early voyages he had 
no doubt that he had visited India, but after his voyage of 
149S he expressed openly his disappointment that a " New 
Found Land " of most inhospitable aspect lay as a barrier be- 
tween Europe and the desired Asia. As the German writer, 
Dr. Asher, has well said, " Cabot's displeasure involves the 
scientific discovery of a new world." In his charts North 
America stands as a separate and continuous continent, though 
doubtless long after his time the separate islands were deline- 
ated, as of old, by others, and all were still supposed to be out- 
lying parts of Asia. In this, as in other respects, Cabot was 
better appreciated fifty years later than in his own day. His 
truthful accounts for the time discouraged further enterprise 
in the same direction. " They that seek riches," said Peter 
Martyr, "must not go to the frozen North." And after one 
or two ineffectual undertakings he found no encouragement 



84 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

to repeat his voyages to the North American coast, but was 
sought for both by Spain and England to conduct other en- 
terprises. He was employed in organizing expeditions to the 
Brazils, or to the North-pole by way of Russia, but the conti- 
nent he had discovered was left unexplored. He was esteemed 
as a skilful mariner and one who had held high official sta- 
tion ; he died dreaming of a new and infallible mode of dis- 
coverino- the lonof-itude which he thouQ^ht had been revealed 
to him from Heaven, and which he must not disclose. The 
date of his death, like that of his birth, is unknown, and his 
burial-place is forgotten. But fifty years later, when English- 
men turned again for a different object towards the American 
continent, they remembered his early achievements, and based 
on them a claim of ownership by right of discovery. Even 
then they were so little appreciated that Lord Bacon, writing 
his "Reign of Henry VH.," gives but three or four sentences 
to the explorations which perhaps exceed in real importance 
all else that happened under that reign. 

For about half a century the English seamen hardly crossed 
the Atlantic. When they began again it was because they 
had learned from Spain to engage in the slave-trade. In that 
base path the maritime glory of England found its revival. 
For fifty years Englishmen thought of the New World only 
as a possession of Spain, with which England was in more or 
less friendly alliance. It was France, not England, which 
showed at that time some symptoms of a wish to dispute the 
rich possession with Spain ; and after the voyage of Verraz- 
zano, in 1 521, the name New France covered much of North 
America on certain maps and globes. It was little more than 
a name ; but the Breton and Gascon fishermen began to make 
trips to the West Indies, mingling more or less of smuggling 
and piracy with their avowed pursuit, and the English followed 
them — learned the way of them, in fact. Under the sway of 
Queen Elizabeth, England was again Protestant, not Catholic ; 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN. 85 

the bigotry of Philip II. had aroused all the Protestant nations 
against him, and the hereditary hostility of France made the 
French sailors only too ready to act as pilots and seamen for 
the English. Between the two the most powerful band of 
buccaneers and adventurers in the world was soon let loose 
upon the Spanish settlements. 

It is a melancholy fact that the voyage which first opened 
the West Indian seas to the English ships was a slave-trading 
voyage. The discreditable promise made by Columbus that 
America should supply Europe with slaves had not been ful- 
filled ; on the contrary, the demand for slaves in the Spanish 
mines and the Portuguese -plantations was greater than Amer- 
ica could supply, and it was necessary to look across the At- 
lantic for it. John Hawkins, an experienced seaman, whose 
father had been a Guinea trader before him, took a cargo of 
slaves from Guinea in 1562, and sold them in the ports of 
Hispaniola. " Worshipful friends in London," it appears, 
shared his venture — Sir Lionel Ducket, Sir Thomas Lodge, 
and the like. He took three ships, the largest only 120 tons; 
he had but a hundred men in all. In Guinea, Hakluyt frank- 
ly tells us in the brief note which gives all that is known of 
this expedition, " he got into his possession, partly by the 
sword and partly by other meanes, to the number of three 
hundred negroes at the least, besides other merchandises 
which that country yeeldeth." With this miserable cargo he 
sailed for Hispaniola, and in three ports left all his goods 
behind him, loaded his own ship with hides, ginger, sugar, and 
pearls, and had enough to freight two other ships besides. 
This is almost all we know of the first voyage ; but the sec- 
ond, in 1564, was fully described by John Sparke, one of his 
companions — and a very racy record it is. This was the first 
English narrative of American adventure ; for though Cabot 
left manuscripts behind him, they were never printed. 

When we consider that the slave-trade is now treated as 



86 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



piracy throughout the civilized world, it is curious to find that 
these courageous early navigators were not only slave-traders, 
but of a most pious description. When Hawkins tried to 



'^^ 





~ -^^ .* 




SIR JOHN HAWKINS, KT. 



capture and enslave a whole town near Sierra Leone, and 
when he narrowly escaped being captured himself, and meet- 
ing the fate he richly deserved, his historian says, " God, who 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN. 87 

worketh all things for the best, would not have it so, and by 
Him wee escaped without danger; His name be praysed for 
it." When the little fleet is becalmed, and suffers for want 
of water, the author says, " But Almightie God, who never 
suffereth His elect to perish, sent vs the sixteene of Februarie 
the ordinarie Brieze, which is the north-west winde." With 
these religious sentiments Hawkins carried his negroes to the 
Spanish settlements in Venezuela and elsewhere. The news 
of his former voyage had reached Philip of Spain, who had 
expressly prohibited the colonists from trading with Hawkins. 
But they wished for his slaves, and he had the skill to begin 
his traffic by explaining that he only wished to sell " certaine 
lean and sicke negroes, which he had in his shippe, like to 
die upon his hands," but which, if taken on shore, might yet 
recover. It was thought that it might be a kindness to the 
poor to let them buy lean negroes at a low price, and so the 
bargain was permitted. If a town gave him a license to trade 
in slaves, and charged money for it, he put the prices high 
enough to cover the charges. If the prices were thought too 
high, and the town authorities objected, he would go on shore 
with a hundred men in armor, and " hauing in his great boate 
two falcons of brasse, and in the other boates double bases in 
their noses ;" and with these cannon would so frighten the 
people that they would send the town treasurer to negotiate. 
The treasurer would perhaps come on horseback, with a jave- 
lin, but would be so afraid of the captain on foot with his 
armor that he would keep at a safe distance, and do the bar- 
gaining at the top of his voice. 

Hawkins and his men seem to have feared nothing seri- 
ously except the alligators, which they called crocodiles, and 
of which they asserted that they drew people to them by their 
lamentations. " His nature is euer, when he would haue his 
praie, to crie and sobbe like a Christian bodie to prouoke 
them to come to him, and then he snatcheth at them ; and 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



thereupon came this proiierbe that is applied vnto women 
when they weepe, Lachrymce Crocodili, the meaning whereof 
is that as the crocodile when he crieth goeth then about 
most to deceive, so doth a woman most commonly when she 
weepeth." Shakespeare, who was about this time writing his 
play of " King Henry VI,," apparently borrowed from Sir John 
Hawkins this story, and introduced it in his lines : 

"As the mournful crocodile 
With sorrow snares relenting passengers." 

2 Henry VI., iii. i. 

Hawkins and his men visited Cuba, Hispaniola, the Tortu- 
gas, and other places ; supplied food to Laudonniere's French 
settlements in what was then called Florida, and ultimately 

sailed along the coast of North 
America to Newfoundland, and 
thence to Europe. By this voy- 
age Hawkins obtained fame and 
honor ; he became Sir John Haw- 
kins, and was authorized to have 
on his crest the half-length fig- 
ure of a negro prisoner, called 
technically "a demie-Moor bound 
and captive." Later, when Queen 
Elizabeth had definitely taken 
sides against Spain, and with- 
drawn all obstacles to Hawkins's 
plans, he established a regular 
settlement, or "factory," in Guin- 
ea as the head -quarters for his 
slave-trade; sailed with slaves 
once more for a third voyage across the Atlantic (1568); 
traded in some places openly, in others secretly and by night, 
in spite of King Philip's prohibition, and prospered well until 




THE HAWKINS ARMS. 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN. 



89 




DEFEAT OF THE BRITISH UNDER SIR JOHN HAWKINS AT SAN JUAN DE ULLOA. 



he met in the port of San Juan de Ulloa a Spanish fleet 
stronger than his own. Hawkins had ah-eady put into the 
port with disabled ships, when he saw a fleet of thirteen 
Spanish treasure-ships outside. He might, perhaps, have kept 
them from entering, or have captured or sunk them, had he 
dared ; but he let them in with a solemn compact of mutual 
forbearance, was then treacherously attacked by the Spaniards, 
and an engagement was brought on. The English were at 



90 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

first successful, but the Spaniards used fire-ships against them, 
and Hawkins was utterly defeated. Some of his vessels w^re 
sunk ; others were driven to sea without provisions. 

Hawkins himself thus plaintively describes their sorrows : 
" With manie sorrowfull hearts wee wandred in an unknowen 
Sea by the space of fourteene dayes, tyll hunger enforced vs 
to seeke the lande, for birdes wTre thought very good meate, 
rattes, cattes, mise, and dogges, none escaped that might be 
gotten, parrotes and monkayes that were had in great prize 
were thought then ver}'- profitable if they served the tourne 
[turn] one dinner." A poor remnant of the crews reached 
England at last in a condition as wretched as that of the 
negroes they had kidnapped ; and Hawkins thus sums up their 
adventures: "If all the miseries and troublesome affaires of 
this sorrowfull voyage should be perfectly and thoroughly 
written, there should need a paynfull [painstaking] man with 
his penne, and as great a time as hee had that wrote the lives 
and deathes of the martirs." Nothing is more probable than 
that Hawkins regarded himself as entitled to a place upon 
the catalogue of saints. But darkened as were these voyages 
by wrong and by disaster, they nevertheless were the begin- 
ning of the long sea-fight between Spain and England for the 
possession of the New World. 

The contest was followed up by the greatest of the Eng- 
lish sailors, Francis Drake, first known as commanding a ves- 
sel under Hawkins in the ill-fated expedition just described. 
From the time of that disaster Drake took up almost as a 
profession the work of plundering the Spaniards ; and he 
might well be called a buccaneer, had he not concentrated 
his piracy on one particular nation. He was the son of a 
Protestant chaplain who had suffered for his opinions ; and 
though the policy of Elizabeth was long uncertain, the public 
sentiment of England was with the United Netherlands in 
their desperate war against Philip \\. The English seamen 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN. 



91 



had found out that the way to reach Spain was through her 
rich possessions in West India and South America, or by 
plundering the treasure-ships to which she could afford but 
meagre escort. Drake made one trip after another to the 




SIR FRANCIS DRAKE. 



American coast, and on February 11, 1573, he looked for the 
first time on the Pacific from the top of a tree in Panama. 
He resolved to become the pioneer of England on that 
ocean, where the English flag had never yet floated, and he 
asked the blessing of God on this enterprise. In November, 



92 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

1577, he embarked for the fulfilment of this purpose, being 
resolved to take Peru itself from the Spaniards. His enter- 
prise was known at the time as " the famous voyage," and 
ended in the first English circumnavigation of the globe. 

Such novels as Kingsley s " Westward Ho ! or, Sir Amyas 
Leigh " give a picture, hardly exaggerated, of the exciting 
achievements of these early seamen. Drake sailed from Plym- 
outh, November 15, 1577, with one hundred and sixty -four 
sailors and adventurers in a fleet of five ships and barks, and 
after making some captures of Spanish vessels about the Cape 
de Verd Islands, he steered for the open sea. He was fifty- 
four days out of sight of land — time enough to have made six 
ocean voyages in a Liverpool steamer — before he came in 
sicjht of the Brazils. There he cruised awhile and victualled 
his ships with seals, which are not now considered good eating. 
Following down the coast in the track of Magellan, he reached 
at last the strait which bears the name of this Portuguese ex- 
plorer, but which no Englishman had yet traversed. Drake's 
object was to come by this unexpected ocean route to Peru, 
and there ravage the Spanish settlements. 

Reaching the coast of Chili, he heard from an Indian in a 
canoe that there was a great Spanish ship at Santiago laden 
with treasure from Peru. Approaching the port, the English- 
men found the ship riding at anchor, having on board but six 
Spaniards and three negroes. These poor fellows, never dream- 
ing that any but their own countrymen could have found their 
way there, welcomed the visitors, beating a drum in their 
honor, and setting forth a jar of Chilian v/ine for their enter- 
tainment. But as soon as the strangers entered, one of them, 
named Thomas Moon, began to lay about him with his sword 
in a most uncivil manner, striking one Spaniard, and shouting, 
" Go down, dog !" {Adaxo, perro !) All the Spaniards and ne- 
groes were at once driven below, except one, who jumped over- 
board and alarmed the town. The people of Santiago fled 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN. 



93 



to the woods, and the Englishmen landed and robbed the town, 
including a little chapel, from which they took " a silver chal- 
ice, two cruets, and one altar-cloth, the spoyle whereof our 
Generall gave to M. Fletcher, his minister." On board the 
captured ship they found abundance of wine and treasure, 
amounting to 37,000 ducats of Spanish money — a ducat being 
worth five and a half shillino^s English, 

They sailed away, leaving their prisoners on shore. Land- 
ing at Tarapaca, they found a Spaniard lying asleep, with thir- 
teen bars of silver beside him, these being worth 4000 ducats. 




"THCJMAS MOON BEGAN TO LAY ABOUT HIM W 



94 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

" We tooke the siluer," says the narrator, briefly, " and left the 
man." Landing for water at another place, they met a Span- 
iard and an Indian boy driving eight ''Llamas or sheepe of 
Peru, which are as bigge as asses ;" each of these having two 
bags of leather on his back, each bag holding fifty pounds of 
fine silver — 800 pounds weight in all. Soon after they capt- 
ured three small barks, one of them laden with silver, and an- 
other with a quantity of linen cloth. At Lima they found 
twelve ships at anchor, robbed them, and cut their cables ; and 
afterwards they came up with a bark yielding eighty pounds 
of gold and a crucifix of gold and emeralds. Everywhere they 
took people wholly by surprise, such a thing as an English 
ship being a sight wholly new on the Pacific Ocean, altogether 
unexpected, and particularly unwelcome. 

Everywhere they heard of a great Spanish treasure-ship, 
the Caca/uego, which had sailed before their arrival ; they fol- 
lowed her to Payta and to Panama, and the " General " prom- 
ised his chain of gold to any lookout who should spy her. 
Coming up with her at last, they fired three shots, striking 
down her mizzen-mast, and then captured her without resist- 
ance. They found in her " great riches, as iewels and precious 
stones, thirteene chests full of royals [reals] of plate, fourscore 
pounds weight of golde and sixe and twentie tunne of siluer." 
To show how thoroughly Drake did his work, piratical as it 
was, the narrator of the voyage says that there were found 
on board two silver cups, which were the pilot's, to whom the 
General said, " Senior [Seiior] Pilot, you haue here two siluer 
cups ; but I must needes haue one of them ;" and the pilot 
gave him one " because hee could not otherwise chuse," and 
gave the other to the ship's steward, perhaps for as good a 
reason. Thus went the voyage ; now rifling a town, now plun- 
dering a captive, now capturing a vessel and taking " a fawl- 
con [breastplate] of golde with a great emeraud in the breast 
thereof," from the owner in person. Never once did they en- 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN. 



95 



counter an armed opponent, or engage in a fair fight ; on the 
other hand, they were never guilty, as the Spaniards often 
were, of wanton cruelty, judging both sides by the testimony 
of their own witnesses. It was an io^noble warfare in one 
sense ; but when we consider that these Englishmen were in 
an unknown sea, with none but unwilling pilots, and that there 
was not a man along the shore who was not their enemy, 
there was surely an element of daring in the whole affair. 

They repaired their ships at the island of Sanno ; and there 
the attacks upon the Spaniards ended. The narrator thus 
sums up the situation : " Our General at this place and time, 
thinking himselfe both in respect of his priuate iniuries re- 
ceived from the Spaniards, as also of their contempts and in- 




PART OF MAP OF DRAKE'S VOYAGES, PUBLISHED BY J. HONDIUS IN HOLLAND 
TOWARDS THE CLOSE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, 



96 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

dignities offered to our countrey and Prince in general!, suffi- 
ciently satisfied and reuenged, and supposing that her Maiestie 
at his returne would rest contented with this seruice, purposed 
to continue no longer upon the Spanish coastes, but began to 
consider and to consult of the best way for his countrey." 

He resolved at last to avoid the Strait of Magellan, which 
he had found dangerous, and the Atlantic Ocean, where he 
was too well known, and to go northward along the coast, 
and sail across the Pacific as he had already crossed the At- 
lantic. He sailed as far north as California, which he called 
New Albion ; he entered " a faire and good bay," which may 
have been that of San Francisco ; he took possession of the 
country in the name of Queen Elizabeth, setting up a post 
with that announcement. He then supposed, but erroneously, 
that the Spaniards had never visited that region, and his re- 
corder says of it : " There is no part of earth here to bee taken 
up wherein there is not some speciall likelihood of gold and 
silver." Then he sailed across the Pacific, this passage last- 
ing from midsummer until October 18 (1579), when he and 
his men came among the islands off the coast of Africa, and 
so rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and reached England at 
last, after three years' absence. They were the first English- 
men to sail round the world, and the first of their country- 
men to visit those islands of " the ororofeous East " w^hich Port- 
ugal had first reached, and Spain had now wrested from 
Portugal. 

The feats of Hawkins and Drake, clouded as they were 
by the slave-trade in one case, and by what seemed much like 
piracy in the other, produced a great stir in England. " The 
nakednesse of the Spaniards and their long-hidden secrets are 
now at length espied." Thus wrote Hakluyt three years after 
Drake's return, and urged " the deducting of some colonies of 
our superfluous people into those temperate and fertile partes 
of America which, being within six weekes sailing of England, 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN. 97 

are yet unpossessed by any Christians, and seeme to offer 
themselves unto us, and stretching nearer unto her Majesty's 
dominions than to any other part of Europe." The forgotten 
explorations of Cabot were now remembered. Here was a 
vast country to which Spain and France had laid claim, but 
which neither had colonized. The fishermen of four or five 
nations were constantly resorting thither, but it belonged, by 
right of prior discovery, to England alone. Why should not 
England occupy it.? "It seems probable," wrote the historian 
of Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 15S3, "by event of precedent at- 
tempts made by the Spanyards and French sundry times " 
{i. e., by their uniform failure) " that the countries lying north 
of Florida God hath reserued the same to be reduced unto 
Christian civility by the English nation. For not long after 
that Christopher Columbus had discouered the islands and 
continents of the West Indies for Spayne, John and Sebas- 
tian Cabot made discovery also of the West from Florida 
northwards to the behoofe of Enorland." Frobisher had al- 
ready attempted the North-west passage; Sir Humphrey Gil- 
bert, the first English colonizer, took possession of Newfound- 
land in the name of the Queen, and tried in vain to settle a 
colony there ; and he died at sea at last, as described in Long- 
fello\y's ballad : 

" Beside the helm he sat, 

The Book was in his hand, 
' Do not fear ; Heaven is as near,' 

lie said, 'by water as by land.'" 

He had obtained a commission from the Queen " to inhabit 
and possess at his choice all remote and heathen lands not 
in the actual possession of any Christian prince." He himself 
obtained for his body but the unquiet possession of a grave 
in the deep sea ; but his attempt was one event more in the 
great series of English enterprises. After him his half-brother 
Raleigh sent Amidas and Barlow (1584) to explore what was 

7 



98 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

then first called Virginia in honor of the Queen ; and the year 
after, Raleigh sent an ineffectual colony to establish itself within 
what is now North Carolina. Then the tumults of war arose 
again; and Sir Francis Drake was summoned to lead a great 
naval expedition, a real " armada," to the attack on Spanish 
America. 

He sailed from Plymouth, England, September 17, 1585, 
with twenty- five vessels carrying 2300 men, and he had un- 
der him, as Vice - admiral. Captain Martin Frobisher, famous 
by his endeavor after the North-west passage. I must pass 
lightly over the details of Drake's enterprise. It was full of 
daring, though it must be remembered that the Spanish forts 
in the West Indies were weak, their ordnance poor, and their 
garrisons small. At the city of San Domingo, which is de- 
scribed as " the antientest and chief inhabited place in all the 
tract of country hereabout," Drake landed a thousand or twelve 
hundred men. A hundred cavalrymen hovered near them, but 
quickly retreated ; the thousand Englishmen divided in two 
portions, assaulted the two city gates, carried them easily, and 
then reunited in the market-place. Towards midnight they 
tried the gates of the castle ; it was at once abandoned, and 
by degrees, street by street, the invaders got possession of half 
the town. The Spanish commissioners held the other half, 
and there were constant negotiations for ransom ; " but upon 
disagreement," says the English narrator, " we still spent the 
early mornings in firing the outmost houses ; but they being 
built very magnificently of stone, with high lofts, gave us no 
small travail to ruin them." They kept two hundred sailors 
busy at this work of firing houses, while as many soldiers 
stood guard over them ; and yet had not destroyed more than 
a third part of the town when they consented to accept 25,000 
ducats for the ransom of the rest. 

It is hard to distino^uish this from the career of a bucca- 
neer ; but, after all, Drake was a mild - mannered gentleman. 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN. 



99 




DRAKE'S ATTACK ON SAN DOMINGO. 



and kept a chaplain. There are, to be sure, in the anonymous 
" short abstract " of this voyage " in the handwriting of the 
time," published by the Hakluyt Society, some ugly hints as 



lOO HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

to the private morals of the officers of Drake's ship, including 
the captain himself. And there is something very grotesque 
in the final fall from grace of the chaplain, Francis Fletcher, 
himself, as described in a memorandum among the Harleian 
MSS. This is the same chaplain who had the chalice and 
the altar-cloth as his share of the plunder of a church at 
Santiago. Drake afterwards found him guilty of mutiny, and 
apparently felt himself free to pronounce both temporal and 
spiritual penalties, as given in the following narrative by an 
eye-witness: 

" Drake excommunicated Fletcher shortly after. . . . He called all the 
company together, and then put a lock about one of his legs, and Drake syt- 
ting cros legged on a chest, and a paire of pantoffles [slippers] in his hand, 
he said, Francis Fletcher, I doo heere excomunicate the out of y^ Church of 
God, and from all benefites and graces thereof, and I denounce the to the 
divell and all his angells ; and then he charged him vppon payne of death not 
once to come before the mast, for if hee did, he swore he should be hanged ; 
and Drake cawsed a posy [inscription] to be written and bond about Fletcher's 
arme, with chardge that if hee took it of hee should then be hanged. The 
poes [posy or inscription] was, Francis fletcher, y- falsest knave that liveth." 

Carthagena was next attacked by Drake, and far more 
stoutly defended, the inhabitants having had twenty days' 
notice because of the attack on San Dominsfo. Carthao-ena 
was smaller, but for various reasons more important ; there 
had been preparations for attack, the women and children had 
been sent away, with much valuable property ; a few old- 
fashioned cannon had been brought together; there were bar- 
ricades made of earth and water-pipes across the principal 
streets; there were pointed sticks tipped with Indian poisons, 
and stuck in the ground, points upward. There w^ere also 
Indian allies armed with bows and poisoned arrows. Against 
all these obstacles the Englishmen charged pell-mell with pikes 
and swords, relying little upon fire-arms. They had longer 
pikes than the Spaniards, and more of the Englishmen were 
armed. "Every man came so willingly on to .the service, as 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN. lOI 

the enemy was not able to endure the fury of such hot as- 
sault." It ended in the ransoming of the town for 110,000 
ducats, or about ^^30,000. It seems, by the report of the coun- 
cil of captains, that ^100,000 had been the original demand, 
but these officers say that they can " with much honor and 
reputation," accept the smaller sum after all, " inasmuch," they 
add, " as we have taken our full pleasure, both in the utter- 
most sacking and spoiling of all their household goods and 
merchandise, as also in that we have consumed and ruined a 
great part of the town by fire." After all, the Englishmen 
insisted that this ransom did not include the abbey and the 
block -house or castle, and they forced the Spaniards to give 
" a thousand crowns " more for the abbey, and because there 
was no money left with which to redeem the castle, it was 
blown up by the English. Drake afterwards took St. Augus- 
tine, already settled by the Spaniards, and after sailing north- 
ward, and taking on board the survivors of Raleigh's unsuc- 
cessful colony in what is now North Carolina, he sailed for 
England. 

What a lawless and even barbarous life was this which 
Drake led upon the American coast and among the Spanish 
settlements ! Yet he was not held to have dishonored his 
nation, but the contrary. His Queen rewarded him, poets 
sang of him, and Sir Philip Sidney, the mirror of all chivalry 
at that day, would have joined one of his expeditions had not 
his royal mistress kept him at home. The Spaniards would 
have done no better, to be sure, and would have brought to 
bear all the horrors of the Inquisition besides. Yet the Eng- 
lish were apt pupils in all the atrocities of personal torture. 
Cavendish, who afterwards sailed in the track of Drake, cir- 
cumnavigating the globe like him, took a small bark on the 
coast of Chili, which vessel had on board three Spaniards and 
a Flemino;. These men were bound to Lima with letters warn- 
ing the inhabitants of the approach of the English, and they 

7* 



102 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




had sworn before their priests that in case of danger the let- 
ters should be thrown overboard. " Yet our General," says 

the narrator, " wrought so 
with them that they did 
confess it ; but he was fain 
to cause them to be tor- 
mented with their thumbs 
in a wrench, and to con- 
tinue three several times 
with extreme pain. Also he 
made the old Fleming be- 
lieve that he would, hang 
him, and the rope being 
about his neck, he was 
pulled up a little from the 
hatches, and yet he would 
not confess, choosing rather 
to die than to be perjured. 
In the end it was confessed 
by one of the Spaniards." Who can help feeling more respect 
for the fidelity of this old man, who would die but not break 
his oath, than for the men who tortured him "^ 

Yet it is just to say that the expeditions of Cavendish, like 
the later enterprises of Drake, were a school for personal 
courage, and were not aimed merely against the defenceless. 
Cavendish gave battle off California to the great Spanish flag- 
ship of the Pacific, the Santa Anna, of 700 tons burden, 
bound home from the Philippine Islands. They fought for 
five or six hours with heavy ordnance and with small -arms, 
and the Spaniards at last surrendered. There were on board 
122,000 pesos of gold, besides silks and satins and other mer- 
chandise, with provisions and wines. These Cavendish seized, 
put the crew and passengers — nearly 200 in all — on shore, 
with tents, provisions, and planks, and burned the Santa An7ia 



THOMAS CAVENDISH. 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN. 



103 



to the water's edge. Then he sailed for England with his 
treasures, across the Pacific Ocean, and thus became the sec- 
ond English circumnavigator of the globe. This sort of pri- 
vateering was an advance on the slave - trading of Hawkins 




CAPTURE OF THE "SANTA ANNA," SPANISH FLAG-SHIP, BY CAVENDISH. 



104 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

and on Drake's early assaults upon almost defenceless towns ; 
but it was often very remote from all honorable warfare. Yet 
it was by such means that the power of Spain was broken, 
and that the name of England and England's queen became 
mighty upon the seas. 

As the sixteenth century began with the fame of the Cab- 
ots, so it ended with the dreams of Raleigh. It is to be 
observed that none of these great buccaneers had done any- 
thing with a view to colonizing, nor would it have been pos- 
sible, by armed force, to have held the conquered Spanish 
towns. Had England only been strong enough for this. South 
America as well as North America might have spoken the 
English tongue to-day. But it was the British naval strength 
only that was established, and after the dispersal of the great 
Spanish Armada sent by Philip II. against England in 1588, 
the power of Spain upon the water was forever broken. This 
opened the way for England to colonize unmolested the 
northern half of the New World ; and the great promoter of 
this work, Sir Walter Raleigh, was the connecting link be- 
tween two generations of Englishmen. He was at once the 
last of the buccaneers and the first of the colonizers. 

He himself had made a voyage, led by as wild a dream 
as any which, in that age of dreams, bewildered an explorer. 
We must remember that, though the terrors of the ocean 
were partly dispelled, their mysteries still held their sway over 
men. Job Hartop, in the region of the Bermudas, describes 
a merman : " We discovered a monster in the sea, who showed 
himself three times unto us from the middle upward, in which 
part he was proportioned like a man, of the complexion of a 
mulatto or tawny Indian." But especially the accounts were 
multiplied of cities or islands which now appeared, now dis- 
appeared, and must be patiently sought out. Sir John Haw- 
kins reported " certain flitting islands " about the Canaries 
" which have been oftentimes scene, and when men approached 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN. I05 

them neere, they vanished . . . and therefore it should seeme 
he is not yet born to whom God hath appointed the finding 
of them." Henry Hawkes, speaking of that standing mystery, 
the Seven Cities of Mexico, says that the Spaniards beHeved 
the Indians to cast a mist over these cities, through witchcraft, 




SIR WALTER RALEIGH. 



SO that none could find them. Is it stransre that under these 
influences Sir Walter Raleigh went in search of the fabled 
empire of Guiana } 

Guiana was supposed in those days to be a third great 
American treasure-house, surpassing those of Peru and Mex- 
ico. Its capital was named El Dorado — " the gilded." Span- 
ish adventurers claimed to have seen it from afar, and de- 
scribed its houses as roofed with gold and silver, and its tem- 



106 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

pies as filled with statues of pure gold. Milton links it with 
Peru and Mexico : 

"Rich Mexico, the seat of Montezuma, 
And Cuzco, in Peru, the richer seat 
Of Atabalipa, and yet unspoiled 
Guiana, whose great city Geryon's sons 
Call El Dorado." 

Raleigh himself went in search of this El Dorado, sailing up 
the Orinoco to find the kingdom, which was said to lie upon 
an island in a salt-water lake, like the Caspian Sea. He 
brought home report of many wonders, including a race called 
Ewaiponima, of whom he says that they have eyes in their 
shoulders, and mouths in the middle of their breasts, with a 
lono- train of hair o-rowinq; backward between their shoulders. 
He admits that he never saw them, but says that every child 
in the provinces he visited affirmed of their existence. It was 
of these imaginary beings that Shakespeare describes Othello 
as discoursing: 

" The cannibals that each other eat, 
The anthropophagi, and men whose heads 
Do grow beneath their shoulders." 

Raleigh also reports a description he had heard of the inhabi- 
tants of this wondrous empire, sitting with the Emperor at 
their carousals, their bodies stripped naked, and covered with 
a white balsam, on which powdered gold was blown by serv- 
ants through hollow canes " until they be all shining from 
the foot to the head, and in this sort they sit drinking by 
twenties and hundreds, and continue in drunkenness some- 
times six or seven days together." 

Raleigh brought home few trophies ; but his descriptions of 
nature were so beautiful, and his treatment of the natives so 
generous that, in spite of his having a touch of the buccaneer 
quality about him, we can well accept the phrase that in him 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN. 107 

"chivalry left the land, and launched upon the deep." But 
that which makes his memory dear to later generations is that 
he, beyond any man of his time, saw the vast field open for 
American colonization, and persistently urged upon Queen 
Elizabeth to undertake it. " Whatsoever prince shall possesse 
it," he wrote of his fabled Guiana, " shall be greatest ; and if 
the King of Spayne enjoy it, he will become unresistable." 
Then he closes with this high strain of appeal, which might 
well come with irresistible force from the courtier-warrior who 
had taught the American Indians to call his queen " Ezrabeta 
Cassipuna Aquerewana," which means, he says, " Elizabeth, the 
great princess, or greatest commander:" 

" To speake more at this time I feare would be but troublesome. I trust 
in God, this being true, will suffice, and that He which is King of al Kings and 
Lorde of Lords will put it into thy heart which is Lady of Ladies to possesse 
it. If not, I will judge those men worthy to be kings thereof, that by her 
grace and leaue will undertake it of themselues." 



V. 

THE FRENCH VOYAGE URS. 

WHEN Spain and Portugal undertook, in 1494, to divide 
the unexplored portions of the globe between them, 
under the Pope's two edicts of the previous year, 'that imper- 
tinent proposal was received by England and France in very 
characteristic ways. England met it with blunt contempt, and 
P'rance with an epigram. " The King of France sent word 
to our great Emperor," says Bernal Diaz, describing the capt- 
ure of some Spanish treasure ships by a French pirate, " that 
as he and the Kins^ of Portug^al had divided the earth between 
themselves, without giving him a share of it, he should like 
them to show him our father Adam's will, in order to know 
if he had made them his sole heirs." {Que mostrassen el tes- 
tamento de niiestro padre Adaii, si les dexo a ellos sola77tente por 
herederos) In the meanwhile he warned them that he should 
feel quite free to take all he could, upon the ocean. 

France was not long content with laying claim to the sea, 
but wished to have the land also. The name of " New 
France " may still be seen on early maps and globes, some- 
times covering all that part of the Atlantic coast north of 
Florida, and sometimes — as in the map of Ortelius, made in 
1572 — the whole of North and South America. All this claim 
was based upon the explorations, first of Verrazzano (1524), 
and then of Cartier (1534-6). The first of these two voy- 
agers sailed along the coast ; the second penetrated into the 
interior, and the great river St. Lawrence was earliest known to 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS. log 

Europeans through the graphic narrative of its original French 
explorer. Perhaps no two expeditions since Columbus have 
added more to the geographical knowledge of the world — or 
would have added it but for the doubt that still rests in some 
minds over the authenticity of Verrazzano's narrative. To 
such extremes has this doubt been carried that Mr. Bancroft, 
in the revised edition of his history, does not so much as men- 
tion the name of Verrazzano, though the general opinion of 
authorities now accepts his narrative as genuine. 

Like many Italian navigators of that age, he served other 
nations than his own, and sailed by order of Francis I., whose 
attention had just been called from royal festivals and com- 
bats of lions to take part in the exploration of the world. For 
this purpose he sent out Verrazzano with four ships " to dis- 
cover new lands " (a discoprir nuove terj'e), and it was to de- 
scribe these same regions that a letter w^as written by the 
explorer from Dieppe to the king, July 8, 1524. This letter 
was published by Ramusio about forty years later, and an 
English translation of it appeared in Hakluyt's famous col- 
lection. A manuscript copy of the letter was discovered by 
Professor George W. Greene at Florence about 1840, and the 
letter itself was reprinted from this copy by the New York 
Historical Society. If authentic, it is the earliest original ac- 
count of the Atlantic coast of the United States. Verrazzano 
saw land first at what is now North Carolina — " a newe land 
never before seen by any man, either auncient or moderne " — 
and afterwards sailed northward, putting in at many harbors. 
The natives everywhere received him kindly at first, and saved 
the life of a young sailor who was sent ashore with presents 
for them, and became exhausted with swimming. In return, 
the Frenchmen carried off a child, and attempted to carry off 
a young girl, tall and very beautiful {di inolta bellezza e d' alta 
statiu^d), whom they found hidden with an older woman near 
the shore, and whom they vainly tried to tempt by presents. 



no HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Everything which they offered was thrown down by the In- 
dian girl in great anger {e con ira a tei'ra gittava), and when 
they attempted to seize her, she shrieked so loudly that they 
let her alone. After such a transaction, we can understand 
why Verrazzano, in the latter part of his voyage, found it im- 
possible to command the confidence of the natives, so that on 
the northern coast of New England the Indians would not 
suffer him to land, but would only let down their furs and 
provisions into the boats from the rocks, insisting on instant 
payment, and making signs of disdain and contempt {dispregio 
e verecondid). In accordance with the usual logic of advent- 
urers at that day, Verrazzano made up his mind* that these 
poor creatures had no sense of religion. 

This early explorer's observations on the natives have lit- 
tle value ; but his descriptions of the coast, especially of the 
harbors of New York and Newport, have peculiar interest, and 
his charts, although not now preserved, had much influence 
upon contemporary geography. He sailed northward as far as 
Newfoundland, having explored the coast from 34' to 50° of 
north latitude, and left on record the earliest description of 
the whole region. As to the ultimate fate of Verrazzano re- 
ports differ, some asserting that he was killed and eaten by 
savages, and others that he was hanged by the Spaniards as 
a pirate. Somewhat the same shadowy uncertainty still at- 
taches to his reputation. 

A greater than Verrazzano followed him, aroused and stim- 
ulated by what he had done. The first explorer of the St. 
Lawrence was Jacques Cartier, who had sailed for years on 
fishing voyages from St. Malo, which was and is the nursery 
of the hardiest sailors of France. Having visited Labrador, 
he longed to penetrate farther; and sailing in April, 1534, he 
visited Newfoundland and the Bay of Chaleur, and set up a 
cross at Gaspe, telling the natives with pious fraud that it was 
only intended for a beacon. He then sailed up the St. Law- 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS. 



Ill 



rence nearly to Anticosti, supposing that this great stream 
was the long- sought passage to Cathay and the Indies. The 
next year he sailed again, with three vessels, and for the first 
time described to the world what he calls " the river of Hoche- 
laga." He applied the name of Canada to a certain part of 




JACQUES CARTIER. 



the banks of the St. Lawrence, calling all below Saguenay, and 
all above Hochelaga, these being Indian names. There has 
been, however, much discussion about the word " Canada," 
which means "a village" in certain Indian dialects, and also 
signifies, curiously enough, " a ravine " in Spanish, and " a lane " 
in Portuguese. 



112 HISTORY OF THE U XI TED STATES. 

In the greatest delight over the beauty of the river, the 
Frenchmen sailed onward. They visited Stadacone, the site 
of Quebec, and Hochelaga, the site of Montreal, Cartier be- 
ing the first to give the name of Mont Royal to the neigh- 
boring mountain. At Hochelaga they found the carefully 
built forts of the Indians, which Cartier minutely describes, 
and the large communal houses already mentioned. They 
met everywhere with a cordial reception, except that the In- 
dians brought to bear strange pretences to keep them from 
ascendino^ the river too far. The chief device was the fol- 
lowing. 

While the Frenchmen lay at Stadacone they saw one 
morning a boat come forth from the woods bearing three men 
'* dressed like devils, wi'apped in dogs' skins, white and black, 
their faces besmeared as black as any coals, with horns on 
their heads more than a yard long," and as this passed the 
ships, one of the men made a long oration, neither of them 
looking towards the ships ; then they all three fell flat in the 
boat, when the Indians came out to meet them, and guided 
them to the shore. It was afterwards explained that these 
were messengers from the god Cudraigny, to tell the French- 
men to go no farther lest they should perish with cold. The 
Frenchmen answered that the alleged god Vv-as but a fool — that 
Jesus Christ would protect his followers from cold. Then the 
Indians, dancing and shouting, accepted this interpretation, 
and made no further objection. But when at a later period 
Cartier and his companions passed the dreary winter, first of 
all Europeans, in what he called the Harbor of the Holy Cross 
— somewhere on the banks of the St. Charles River — he learned 
bv suffering . that the threats of the god Cudraigny had some 
terror in them, after all. He returned to France the following 
summer, leaving no colony in the New World. 

For the first French efforts at actual colonization we must 
look southward on the map of America again, and trace the 




JACQUES CARTIER SETTING UP A CROSS AT GASPE. 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS. 



115 



career of a different class of Frenchmen. It would have 
needed but a few minor changes in the shifting scenes of his- 
tory to have caused North America to have been colonized 
by French Protestants, instead of French Catholics. After 
Villegagnon and his Huguenots had vainly attempted a colony 
at Rio Janeiro in 1555, Jean Ribaut, with other Huguenots, 




THE LANDING OF JEAN RIBAUT. 



made an actual settlement seven years later, upon what is now 
the South Carolina coast. At his first approach to land, the 
Indians assembled on the shore, offering their own garments 
to the French officers, and pointing out their chief, who re- 
mained sitting on boughs of laurel and palm. All the early 
experience of the Frenchmen with the natives was marked by 
this gentleness, and by a very ill -requited hospitality. Then 



Il6 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

sailing to what is now the St. John's River, and arriving on 
May-day, they called it " River of May," and found in it that 
charm which it has held for all explorers, down to the succes- 
sive military expeditions that occupied and abandoned it dur- 
ing our own civil war. Here they were again received by a 
picturesque crowd of savages, wading into the water up to 
their shoulders, and bringing little baskets of maize and of 
white and red mulberries, while others offered to help their 
visitors ashore. Other rivers also the Frenchmen visited, 
naming them after rivers of France — the Seine, the Loire — 
and then sailing farther north, they entered Port Royal Har- 
bor, " finding the same one of the fayrest and greatest Havens 
of the worlde," says the quaint old translation of Thomas 
Hackit. Here they left behind a colony of thirty men, under 
Albert de la Pierria, to complete a fort called Charlesfort. It 
was the only Christian colony north of Mexico, and the site 
of the fort, though still disputed, was undoubtedly not far 
from Beaufort, South Carolina. The lonely colonists spent a 
winter of absolute poverty and wretchedness. They were fed 
by the Indians, and wronged them in return. They built for 
themselves vessels in which they sailed for France, reaching 
it after sufferings too great to tell. 

Still another French Protestant colony followed in 1564, 
led by Rene de Laudonniere. He too sought the " River of 
May;" he too was cordiall}' received by the Indians; and he 
built above what is now called St. John's Bluff, on the river 
of that name, a stronghold called Fort Caroline. " The place 
is so pleasant," wrote he, "that those which are melancholike 
would be enforced to change their humor.'' The adventures 
of this colony are told in the narrative of the artist Le Moyne 
— lately reproduced, with heliotypes of all his quaint illustra- 
tions, by J. R. Osgood & Co., Boston. These designs — some 
of which I am permitted by the publishers to copy — are so 
graphic that we seem in the midst of the scenes described. 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS. 



117 




•««i«,isiiiirtii|i\ill|}il 




INDIAN DWELLING AND CANOE. 



They set before us the very costumes of the Frenchmen, and 
the absence of costume among the Indians. We see the do- 
mestic habits, the rehgious sacrifices, the warhke contests, the 
Indian faces alone being conventionahzed, and made far too 
European for strict fidehty. We see also the animals that 
excited the artist's wonder, and especially the alligator, which 
is rendered with wonderful accuracy, though exaggerated in 
size. We see here also the column which had been erected 
by Ribaut on his previous voyage, and how the Indians had 
decked it, after worshipping there as at an altar. 

The career of the colony was a tragedy. Fort Caroline 
was built ; the colonists mutinied, and sought to become bucca- 
neers, "calling us cowards and greenhorns," says Le Moyne, 

8* 



ii8 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



"for not joining in the piracy." Failing miserably in this, and 
wearing out the patience of their generous Indian friends, they 
almost perished of famine. The very fact that they were a 
Protestant colony brought with it a certain disadvantage, so 
lone as the colonists were French. Protestantism in EnHand 
reached the lower classes, but never in France. The Hugue- 



f^ (^Af,^P^)i^i|j 




INDIANS DECORATING RIBAUT S PILLAR. 



nots belonged, as a rule, to the middle and higher classes, and 
the peasants, so essential to the foundation of a colony, would 
neither emigrate nor change their religion. There were plenty 
of adventurers, but no agriculturists. The English Hawkins 
visited and relieved them. Ribaut came from France and 
again gave them aid, and their lives were prolonged only to 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS. II9 

meet cruel destruction from the energy and perfidy of a Span- 
iard, Don Pedro de Menendez. He came with a great squad- 
ron of thirty-four vessels — his flag-ship being nearly a thousand 
tons burden — to conquer and settle the vast continent, then 
known as Florida. Parkman has admirably told the story of 
Menendez's victory ; sufifice it to say that he overcame the 
little colony, and then, after taking an oath upon the Bible, 
adding the sign of the cross, and giving a pledge, written and 
sealed, to spare their lives, he proceeded to massacre every 
man in cold blood, sparing only, as Le Moyne tells us, a drum- 
mer, a fifer, and a fiddler. It is the French tradition that he 
hanged his prisoners on trees, with this inscription : " I do this, 
not as to Frenchmen, but as to Lutherans." This was the 
same Menendez who in that same year (1565) had founded 
the Spanish colony of St. Augustine, employing for this pur- 
pose the negro slaves he had brought from Africa — the first 
introduction, probably, of slave labor upon the soil now includ- 
ed in the United States. Menendez was the true type of the 
Spanish conqueror of that day — a race of whom scarcely one 
in a thousand, as poor Le Moyne declares, was capable of a 
sensation of pity. 

Menendez thanked God with tears for his victory over the 
little garrison. But his act aroused a terrible demand for ven- 
geance in France, and this eager desire was satisfied by a 
Frenchman — this time by one who was probably not a Hu- 
guenot, but a Catholic. Dominique de Gourgues had been 
chained to the oar as a galley-slave when a prisoner to the 
Spaniards, and finding his king unable or unwilling to avenge 
the insult given to his nation in America, De Gourgues sold 
his patrimony that he might organize an expedition of his 
own. It is enough to say that he absolutely annihilated, in 
1568, the colony that Menendez had left behind him in Flor- 
ida, and hanged the Spaniards to the same trees where they 
had hanged the French, nailing above them this inscription : 



120 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES AVENGING THE MURDER OF THE HUGUENOT COLONY. 



" I do this not as to Spaniards or Moors {iMaraniies), but as 
to traitors, robbers, and murderers." 

All these southern and Protestant colonies failed at last. 
It was farther north, in the lands of the most zealous of Ro- 
man Catholics, and in the regions explored long since by Car- 
tier, that the brilliant career of French colonization in Amer- 
ica was to have its course. Yet for many years the French 
voyages to the north-eastern coasts of America were for fish- 
ing or trade, not religion : the rover went before the priest. 
The Cabots are said by Peter Martyr to have found in use 
on the Banks of Newfoundland the word Baccalaos as applied 
to cod - fish ; and as this is a Basque word, the fact has led 
some writers to believe that the Basque fishermen had already 
reached there, though this argument is not now generally 
admitted. Cape Breton, which is supposed to be the oldest 
French name on the continent of North America, belongs to 
a region described on a Portuguese map of 1520 as "discov- 
ered by the Bretons." There were French fishing vessels off 
Newfoundland in 15 17, and in 1578 there were as many as 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS. 



121 



one hundred and fifty of these, all other nations furnishing 
but two hundred. Out of these voyages had grown tempo- 
rary settlements, and the fur trade sprang up by degrees at 
Anticosti, at Sable Island, and especially at Tadoussac. It be- 
came rapidly popular, so that when two nephews of Cartier 
obtained a monopoly of it for twelve years, the news pro- 
duced an uproar, and the patent was revoked. Through this 
trade Frenchmen learned the charm of the wilderness, and 
these charms attracted then, as always, a very questionable 
class of men. Cartier, in 1541, was authorized to ransack the 
prisons for malefactors. De la Roche, in 1598, brought a crew 
of convicts. De Monts, in 1604, was authorized to impress 
idlers and vagabonds for his colony. To keep them in order 
he brought both Catholic priests and Huguenot ministers, 
who disputed heartily on the way. " I have seen our cure 
and the minister," said Champlain, in Parkman's translation, 




"HE BROUGHT BOTH CATHOLIC PRIESTS AND HUGUENOT MINISTERS, WHO DIS- 
PUTED HEARTILY ON THE WAY." 



122 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

"fall to with their fists on questions of faith. I cannot say 
which had the more pluck, or which hit the harder, but I 
know that the minister sometimes complained to the Sieur 
de Monts that he had been beaten." 

The Jesuits reached New France in 1611, and from that 
moment the religious phase of the emigration began. But 
their style of missionary effort was very unlike that severe 
type of religion which had made the very name of Chris- 
tian hated in the days when Christian meant Spaniard, and 
when the poor Florida Indians had exclaimed, in despair, 
" The devil is the best thing in the world : we adore him." 
The two bodies of invaders held the same faith, acknowl- 
edged the same spiritual chief ; but here the resemblance 
ended. From the beginning the Spaniards came as cruel 
and merciless masters ; the Frenchmen, with few exceptions, 
as kindly and genial companions. The Spanish invaders were 
more liberal in the use of Scripture than any Puritan, but 
they were also much more formidable in the application of 
it. They maintained unequivocally that the earth belonged to 
the elect, and that they were the elect. The famous " Requisi- 
tion," which was to be read by the Spanish commanders on 
entering each province for conquest, gave the full Bible nar- 
rative of the origin of the human race, announced the lord- 
ship of St. Peter, the gift of the New World to Spain by his 
successor the Pope ; and deduced from all this the right to 
compel the natives to adopt the true religion. If they refused, 
they might rightfully be enslaved or killed. The learned Dr. 
Pedro Santander, addressing the king in 1557 in regard to 
De Son's expedition, wrote thus: 

■■' This is the land promised by the Eternal Father to the faithful, since 
we are commanded by God in the Holy Scriptures to take it from them, being 
idolaters, and by reason of their idolatry and sin to put them all to the 
knife, leaving no living thing save maidens and children, their cities robbed 
and sacked, their walls and houses levelled to the earth." 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS. 123 

In another part of the same address the author describes 
Florida as " now in possession of the Demon," and the natives 
as " lost sheep which have been snatched away by the dragon, 
the Demon." There is no doubt that a genuine superstition 
entered into the gloomy fanaticism of the Spaniards. When 
Columbus brought back from one of his voyages some native 
chiefs whose garments and ornaments were embroidered with 
cats and owls, the curate Bernaldez announced without hesi- 
tation that these grotesque forms represented the deities whom 
these people worshipped. It is astonishing how much easier 
it is to justify one's self in taking away a man's property or 
his life when one is thoroughly convinced that he worships 
the devil. At any rate, the Spaniards acted upon this prin- 
ciple. Twelve years after the first discovery of Hispaniola, as 
Columbus himself writes, six-sevenths of the natives were dead 
through ill-treatment. 

But the French pioneers were perfectly indifferent to these 
superstitions ; embroidered cat or Scriptural malediction trou- 
bled them very little. They came for trade, for exploration, 
for peaceful adventure, and also for religion ; but almost from 
the beginning they adapted themselves to the Indians, urged 
on them their religion only in a winning way; and as to their 
ways of living, were willing to be more Indian than the In- 
dians themselves. The instances of the contrary were to be 
found, not among the Roman Catholic French, but among the 
Huguenots in Florida. 

The spirit which was exceptional in the benevolent Span- 
ish monk Las Casas was common among French priests. The 
more profoundly they felt that the Indians were by nature 
children of Satan, the more they gave soul and body for their 
conversion. Pere Le Caron, travelling with the Hurons, writes 
frankly about his infinite miseries, and adds : " But I must 
needs tell you what abundant consolation I found under all 
my troubles, for, alas ! when one sees so many infidels need- 



124 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

ing nothing but a drop of water to make them children of 
God, he feels an inexpressible ardor to labor for their conver- 
sion, and sacrifice to it his repose and his life." At times, no 
doubt, the Frenchmen would help one Indian tribe against 
another, and this especially against the Iroquois ; but in gen- 
eral the French went as friendly associates, the Spaniards as 
brutal task-masters. 

The first French colonists were rarely such in the English 
or even the Spanish sense. They were priests or soldiers or 
traders — the latter at first predominating. They did not offer 
to buy the lands of the Indians, as the English colonists after- 
wards did, for an agricultural colony was not their aim. They 
wished to wander through the woods with the Indians, to join 
in their hunting and their wars, and, above all, to obtain their 
furs. For this they were ready to live as the Indians lived, 
in all their discomforts ; they addressed them as " brothers " 
or as " children ;" they married Indian wives with full church 
ceremonies. No such freedom of intercourse marked the life 
of any English settlers. The Frenchmen apparently liked to 
have the Indians with them ; the savages were always coming 
and going, in full glory, about the French settlements ; they 
feasted and slept beside the French ; they were greeted with 
military salutes. The stately and brilliant Comte de Fronte- 
nac, the favorite officer of Turenne, and the intimate friend 
of La Grande Mademoiselle, did not disdain, when Governor- 
general of Canada, to lead in person the war- dance of his 
Indians, singing and waving the hatchet, while a wigwam full 
of braves, stripped and painted for war, went dancing and 
howling after him, shouting like men possessed, as the French 
narratives say. He himself admits that he did it deliberately, 
in order to adopt their ways, {jfe leiir mis vioy-mesme la hache 
a la main . . . poiw m acconiniodcr a leiirs famous de faire^ 
Perhaps no single act ever done by a Frenchman explains so 
well how they won the hearts of the Indians. 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS. 1 25 

The pageantry of the Roman Catholic Church had, more- 
over, its charm for native converts ; the French officers tauQ:ht 
them how to fight ; the French priests taught them how to 
die. These heroic missionaries could bear torture like In- 
dians, and could forgive their tormentors as Indians could not. 
This combination of oentleness with courage was something 
wholly new to the Indian philosophy of life. Pere Brebeuf 
wrote to Rome from Canada: "That which above all thinss 
is demanded of laborers in this vineyard is an unfailing sweet- 
ness and a patience thoroughly tested." And when he died 
by torture in 1649 he so conducted himself that the Indians 
drank his blood, and the chief devoured his heart, in the hope 
that they might share his heroism. 

But while the missionaries were thus gentle and patient 
with their converts, their modes of appeal included the whole 
range of spiritual terrors. Pere Le Jeune wrote home ear- 
nestly for pictures of devils tormenting the soul with fire, ser- 
pents, and red-hot pincers; Pere Garnier, in a manuscript 
letter copied by Mr. Parkman, asks for pictures of demons 
and dragons, and suggests that a single representation of a 
happy or beautiful soul will be enough. " The pictures must 
not be in profile, but in full face, looking squarely and with 
open eyes at the beholder, and all in bright colors, without 
flowers or animals, which only distract." But, after all, so es- 
sentially different was the French temperament from the 
Spanish that the worst French terrors seemed more kindly 
and enjoyable than the most cheerful form of Spanish devo- 
tion. The Spaniards offered only the threats of future tor- 
ment, and the certainty of labor and suffering here. But the 
French won the Indians by precisely the allurements that to 
this day draw strangers from all the world to Paris — a joyous 
out-door life and an unequalled cookery. " I remember," says 
Lescarbot, describing his winter in Canada, "that on the 14th 
of January (1607), o^ ^ Sunday afternoon, we amused ourselves 



126 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

with singing and music on the river Equille, and that in the 
same month we went to see the wheat-fields two leagues from 
the fort, and dined merrily in the sunshine." At these feasts 
there was hardly a distinction between the courtly foreigner 
and the naked Indian, and even the coarse aboriginal palate 
felt that here was some one who would teach a new felicity. 
Mr. Parkman tells us of a convert who asked, when at the 
point of death, whether he might expect any pastry in heaven 
like that with which the French had regaled him. 

In return for these blandishments it was not very hard for 
the Indians to accept the picturesque and accommodating 
faith of their guests. This was not at first done very rever- 
ently, to be sure. Sometimes when the early missionaries 
asked their converts for the proper words to translate the 
sacred phrases of the catechism, their mischievous proselytes 
would give them very improper words instead, and then would 
shout with delight whenever the priests began their lessons. 
Dr. George E. Ellis, in his valuable book " The Red Man and 
the White Man," points out that no such trick was ever at- 
tempted, so far as we know, beneath the graver authority of 
the apostle Eliot, when his version of the Scriptures was in 
progress. In some cases the native criticisms took the form 
of more serious remonstrance. Membertou, one of the most 
influential of the early Indian converts, said frankly that he 
did not like the petition for daily bread in the Lord's Prayer, 
and thouQ-ht that some distinct allusion to moose meat and 
fish would be far better. 

To these roving and companionable Frenchmen, or, rather, 
to the native canoe-men, who were often their half-breed pos- 
terity, was given at a later period the name voyageurs — a 
name still used for the same class in Canada, though it de- 
scribes a race now vanishing. I have ventured to anticipate 
its date a little, and apply it to the French rovers of this early 
period, because it is one of those words which come sponta- 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS. 



127 



neously into use, tell their own story, and save much descrip- 
tion. The character that afterwards culminated in the class 
called voyagetirs was the character which lay behind all the early 
French enterprises. It implied those roving cjualities which 
led the French to be pioneers in the fisheries and the fur 
trade ; and which, even after the arrival of the Jesuit mission- 
aries, still prevailed under the blessing of the Church. The 
Spaniards were gloomy despots ; the Dutch and Swedes were 
traders ; the English, at least in New England, were religious 
enthusiasts ; the French were voyageurs, and even, under the 
narrative of the most heroic and saintly priest we see some- 
thing of the same spirit. The best early type of the voyageiir 
temperament combined with the courage of the Church mili- 
tant is to be found in Samuel de Champlain. 

After all, there is no earthly immortality more secure than 
to have stamped one's name on the map ; and that of Cham- 
plain will be forever associ- 
ated with the beautiful lake 
which he first described, 
and to which the French 
missionaries vainly attempt- 
ed to attach another name. 
Champlain was a French- 
man of good family, who 
had served in the army, 
and had, indeed, been from 
his childhood familiar with 
scenes of war, because he 
had dwelt near the famous 
city of Rochelle, the very 
hot -bed of the civil strife 
between Catholics and Hu- 
guenots. Much curiosity existing in France in regard to the 
great successes of Spain in America^ he obtained naval em- 




SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIISf. 



''<;--L^ 



\ 



128 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

ployment in the Spanish service, and visited, as commander 
of a ship, the Spanish-American colonies. This was in 1599, 
and he wrote a report on the condition of all these regions — 
a report probably fuller than anything else existing at that 
time, inasmuch as the Spaniards systematically concealed the 
details of their colonial wealth. Little did they know that 
they had in the humble French captain of the Saint -yuliaii 
an untiring observer, who would reveal to the acute mind of 
Henry the Fourth of France many of the secrets of Spanish 
domination ; and would also disgust the French mind with 
pictures of the fanaticism of their rivals. In his report he 
denounced' the cruelty of the Spaniards, described the way in 
which they converted Indians by the Inquisition, and made 
drawings of the burnings of heretics by priests. His observa- 
tions on all commercial matters were of the greatest value, 
and he was the first, or one of the first, to suggest a ship- 
canal across the isthmus of Panama. Full of these vivid im- 
pressions of Spanish empire, he turned his attention towards 
the northern part of the continent, in regions unsettled by 
the Spaniards, visiting them first in 1603, under Pont -Grave, 
and then in seven successive vovao-es. His narratives are 
minute, careful, and graphic ; he explored river after river 
with the Indians, eating and sleeping with them, and record- 
ing laboriously their minutest habits. It is to his descriptions, 
beyond any others, that we must look for faithful pictures of 
the Indian absolutely unaffected by contact with white men ; 
and *his voyages, which have lately been translated by Dr. 
C. P. Otis, and published by the Prince Society, with anno- 
tations by Mr. E. L. Slafter, have a value almost unique. 

Champlain himself may be best described as a devout and 
high-minded voyageur. He was a good Catholic, and on some 
of his exploring expeditions he planted at short intervals 
crosses of white cedar in token of his faith ; but we see the 
born rover through the proselyting Christian. Look, for in- 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS. 1 29 

stance, at the spirit in which he dedicates his voyage of 1604 
to the Queen Regent: 

" Madame, — Of all the most useful and excellent arts, that of navigation 
has always seemed to me to occupy the first place. For the more hazardous 
it is and the more numerous the perils and losses by which it is attended, so 
much the more is it esteemed and exalted above all others, being wholly un- 
suited to the timid and irresolute. By this art we obtain knowledge of differ- 
ent countries, regions, and realms. By it we attract and bring to our own 
land all kinds of riches, by it the idolatry of paganism is overthrown and 
Christianity proclaimed throughout all the regions of the earth. This is the 
art which from my early age has won my love, and induced me to expose my- 
self all my life to the impetuous waves of the ocean, and led me to explore the 
coasts of a part of America, especially of New France, where I have always 
desired to see the lily flourish, and also the only religion, catholic, apostolic, 
and Roman." 

Here we have the French Hhes and the holy CathoHc re- 
Hgion at the end, but the impulse of the voyageur through all 
the rest. We see here the born wanderer, as full of eagerness 
as Tennyson's Ulysses, 

"Always roaming with a hungry heart." 

And when we compare this frank and sailor-like address with 
the devout diplomacy, already quoted, of the Spanish doctor, 
we see in how absolutely different a spirit the men of these 
two nations approached the American Indians. 

Champlain was an ardent lover of out-door life, and an in- 
telligent field naturalist, and the reader finds described or men- 
tioned in his narratives many objects now familiar, but then 
strange. He fully describes, for instance, the gar-pike of West- 
ern lakes, he mentions the moose under the Algonquin name 
" orignac," the seal under the name of " sea-lion," the musk-rat, 
and the horseshoe-crab. He describes almost every point and 
harbor on the north-east coast, giving the names by which 
many of them are since known ; for instance, Mount Desert, 
which he calls Isle des Monts Deserts, meaning simply Desert 

9 



130 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



Mountains, so that the accent need not be laid, as is now usual, 
on the second syllable. We know from him that while yet un- 
visited by white men, the Indians of the Lake Superior region 
not only mined for copper, but melted it into sheets, and ham- 
mered it into shape, making bracelets and arrow-heads. Car- 
tier, in 1535, had mentioned the same thing, but not so fully. 
And all Champlain's descriptions, whether of places or people. 



/^1TATI0N.DE 
^^BECCL 




CHAMPLAIN S FORTIFIED RESIDENCE AT QUEBEC. 



have the value that comes of method and minuteness. When 
he ends a chapter with " This is precisely what I have seen 
of this northern shore," or, " This is what I have learned from 
those savages," we know definitely where his knowledge begins 
and ends, and whence he got his information. 

It is fortunate for the picturesqueness of his narrative that 
he fearlessly ventures into the regions of the supernatural, but 
always upon very definite and decided testimony. It would 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS. 131 

be a pity, for instance, to spare the Gougou from his pages. 
The Gougou was a terrible monster reported by the savages 
to reside on an island near the Bay of Chaleur. It was in the 
form of a woman, but very frightful, and so large that the 
masts of a tall vessel would not reach the waist. The Gougou 
possessed pockets, into which he — or she — used to put the 
Indians when caught ; and those who had escaped said that 
a single pocket would hold a ship. From this receptacle the 
victims were only taken out to be eaten. Several savages as- 
sured Champlain that they had seen the creature ; many had 
heard the horrible noises he made ; and one French advent- 
urer had sailed so near his dwelling-place as to hear a strange 
hissing from that quarter, upon which all his Indian compan- 
ions hid themselves. " What makes me believe what they say," 
says Champlain, " is the fact that all the savages in general 
fear it, and tell such strange things about it that if I were to 
record all they say it would be regarded as a myth ; but I hold 
that this is the dwelling-place of some devil that torments 
them in the above-mentioned manner. This is what I have 
learned about the Gougou." 

Champlain has left a minute description, illustrated by his 
own pencil, of his successive fortified residences — first at what 
is now De Monts Island, named originally the Island of the 
Holy Cross, and afterwards at Port Royal and Quebec. Traces 
of the first- named encampment have been found in some can- 
non-balls, one of which is now in possession of the New Eng- 
land Historic- Genealogical Society. His journals vividly de- 
scribe his winter discomforts in America, and the French de- 
vices that made them endurable. He also gives, as has been 
said, minute descriptions of the Indians, their homes and their 
hunting, their feasting and fighting, their courage and super- 
stitions. His relations to them were, like those of other 
Frenchmen, for the most part kindly and generous. His most 
formidable act of kindness, if such it may be called, was when 



132 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



^i^M^w*'?*ii^- 




,, •'/« 




"HE RESTED HIS MUSKET." 



he first revealed to them the terrible 
power of fire-arms. He it was, of all 
men, who began for them that series 
of lessons in the military art by 
which the Frenchmen doubled the 
terrors of Indian warfare. Cham- 
plain has portrayed vividly for us 
with pen and pencil the early stages 
of that alliance which in later years 
made the phrase " French and In- 
dian " the symbol of all that was 
most to be dreaded in the way of 
conflict. He describes picturesquely, for instance, an occasion 
when he and his Algonquin allies marched together against 
the Iroquois; and his Indians told him if he could only kill 
three particular chiefs for them they should win the day. 
Reaching a promontory which Mr. Slafter believes to have 
been Ticonderoga, they saw the Iroquois approaching, with 
the three chiefs in front, wearing plumes. Champlain then 
told his own allies that he"^ was very sorry they could not 
understand his language.- better, for he could teach them such 
order and method in attacking their enemies that they would 
be sure of victory ; but meanwhile he would do what he could. 
Then they called upon him with loud cries to stand forward ; 
and so, putting him twenty paces in front, they advanced. 
Halting within thirty paces of the enemy, he rested his 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS. 1 33 

musket against his cheek and aimed at one of the chiefs. 
The musket — a short weapon, then called an arquebus — was 
loaded with four balls. Two chiefs fell dead, and another man 
was mortally wounded. The effect upon the Iroquois must 
have been like that of fire from heaven. These chiefs were 
dressed in armor made of cotton fibre, and arrow -proof, yet 
they died in an instant ! The courage of the whole band gave 
way, and when another Frenchman fired a shot from the 
woods, they all turned and fled precipitately, abandoning camp 
and provisions — a whole tribe, and that one of the bravest, 
routed by two shots from French muskets. This was in July, 
1609. 

On his voyage of the following year he also taught the 
same Indians how to attack a fortified place. Until that time 
their warlike training had taught them only how to track a 
single enemy or to elude him ; or at most, gathered in solid 
masses, to pour in showers of arrows furnished with those 
sharp stone heads so familiar in our collections. We know 
from descriptions elsewhere given by Champlain that the chief 
strategy of the Indians lay in arranging and combining these 
masses of bowmen. This they planned in advance by means 
of bundles of sticks a foot long, each stick standing for a sol- 
dier, with larger sticks for chiefs. Going to some piece of 
level ground five or six feet square, the head chief stuck these 
sticks in the ground according to his own judgment. Then 
he called his companions, and they studied the arrangements. 
It was a plan of the battle — a sort of Indian Kriegspiel, like 
the German military game that has the same object. The 
warriors studied the sticks under the eye of the chief, and 
comprehended the position each should occupy. Then they 
rehearsed it in successive drills. We are thus able to under- 
stand — what would otherwise be difiicult to explain — the com- 
pact and orderly array which Champlain's pictures represent. 

It was with a band of warriors thus trained that Champlain 



134 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



set forth from Quebec, in June, 1610, to search for a camp of 
Iroquois. The Indian guides went first, armed, painted, naked, 
Hght-footed, and five Frenchmen marched after them, arrayed 
in heavy corselets for defence, and bearing guns and ammuni- 
tion. It was an alHance of hare and tortoise, but in this case 
the hare kept in front. Champlain describes their discom- 




ATTACK ON AN IROQUOIS FORT. 



forts as they tramped in their heavy accoutrements through 
pathless swamps, with water reaching to their knees, far be- 
hind their impatient leaders, whose track they found it hard 
to trace. Suddenly they came upon the very scene where the 
fight had begun, and when the savages perceived them, " they 
began to shout so that one could not have heard it thunder." 
In the midst of this tumult Champlain anid his four compan- 
ions approached the Iroquois fortress — built solidly of large 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS. 135 

trees arranged in a circle — and coolly began to fire their mus- 
kets through the logs at the naked savages within. He thus 
describes the scene, which is also vividly depicted in one of 
his illustrations, here given :^ 

" You could see the arrows fly on all sides as thick as hail. The Iroquois 
were astonished at the noise of our muskets, and especially that the balls 
penetrated better than their arrows. They were so frightened at the effect 
produced that, seeing several of their companions fall wounded and dead, 
they threw themselves on the ground whenever they heard a discharge, sup- 
posing that the shots were sure. We scarcely ever missed firing two or three 
balls at one shot, resting our muskets most of the time on the side of their 
barricade. But seeing that our ammunition began to fail, I said to all the 
savages that it was necessary to break down their barricades and capture them 
by storm, and that in order to accomplish this they must take their shields, 
cover themselves with them, and thus approach so near as to be able to fasten 
stout ropes to the posts that supported the barricades, and pull them down by 
main strength, in that way making an opening large enough to permit them to 
enter the fort. I told them that we would meanwhile, by our musketry fire, 
keep off the enemy as they endeavored to prevent them from accomplishing 
this ; also that a number of them should get behind some large trees which 
were near the barricade, in order to throw them down upon the enemy, and 
that others should protect them with their shields, in order to keep the enemy 
from injuring them. All this they did very promptly." 

Thus were the military lessons begun — not lessons in the 
use of fire-arms alone, but in strategy and offensive tactics, to 
which the same class of instructors were destined later to add 
an improved mode of fortification. So completely did Cham- 
plain and his four Frenchmen find themselves the masters of 
the situation, that when some young fellows, countrymen of 
their own, and still better types of the voyageur than they 
themselves were, came eagerly up the river in some trading 
barks to see what was going on, Champlain at once ordered 
the savages who were breaking down the fortress to stop, " so 
that the new-comers should have their share in the sport." 
He then gave the guns to the young French traders, and let 
them amuse themselves by shooting down a few defenceless 
Iroquois before the walls fell. 



136 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

At last the fort yielded. " This, then, is the victory ob- 
tained by God's grace," as Champlain proudly says. Out of a 
hundred defenders, only fifteen were found alive. All these 
were put to death by tortures except one, whom Champlain 
manfully claimed for his share, and saved ; and he was perhaps 
the first to describe fully those frightful cruelties and that 
astonishina: fortitude which have since been the theme of so 
much song and story, and to point out, moreover, that in these 
refinements of barbarity the women exceeded the men. Later 
they were joined on the war-path by a large force of friendly 
Indians, " who had never before seen Christians, ior whom they 
conceived a great admiration." This admiration was not des- 
tined, as in the case of the Spaniards and English, to undergo 
a stern reaction, but it lasted till the end of the French power 
on the American continent, and did a great deal to postpone 
that end. If the control of the New World could have been 
secured solely through the friendship and confidence of its 
native tribes, North America would have been wholly French 
and Roman Catholic to-day. 



VI. 

''AN ENGLISH NAT/ON" 

SIR WALTER RALEIGH, just on the eve of his fall 
from greatness, and after the failure of nine successive 
expeditions to America, wrote these words : " I shall yet live 
to see it an English nation." He was mistaken ; he did not 
live to see it, although his fame still lives, and what he pre- 
dicted has in one sense come to pass. The vast difference 
that might exist between a merely English nation and an 
English - speaking nation had never dawned upon his mind. 
All that " History of the World " which he meditated in the 
Tower of London contained no panorama of events so won- 
derful as that which time has unrolled in the very scene of 
his labors. 

We owe to Raleigh not merely the strongest and most 
persistent impulse towards the colonization of America, but 
also the most romantic and ideal aspects of that early move- 
ment. He it is who has best described for us the charm ex- 
ercised by this virgin soil over the minds of cultivated men. 
Had he not sought to win it for a virgin queen, it would still 
have been " Virginia " to him. With what insatiable delis^ht 
he describes the aspects of nature in this New World ! 

" I never saw a more beawtifuU countrey, nor more liuely prospectes, hils 
so raised heere and there ouer the vallies, the riuer winding into diuers 
braunches, the plaines adioyning without bush or stubble, all faire greene 
grasse, the ground of hard sand easy to march on, eyther for horse or foote, 



138 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

the deare crossing in euery path, the birdes towardes the euening singing on 
euery tree, with a thousand seueral tunes, cranes and herons of white, crimson, 
and carnation pearching on the riuers side, the ayre fresh with a gentle easterlie 
wind, and euery stone that we stooped to take vp promised eyther golde or 
siluer by his complexion." 

Raleigh represents the imaginative and glowing side of 
American exploration — an aspect which, down to the days of 
John Smith, remained vividly prominent, and which had not 
wholly disappeared even under the graver treatment of the 
Puritans. 

The very adventures of some of the early colonies seem to 
retain us in the atmosphere of those vanishing islands and 
enchanted cities of which the early English seamen dreamed. 
Raleigh sent his first colony to Virginia in 1585, under Ralph 
Lane; in 1586 he sent a ship with provisions to their aid, 
"who, after some time spent in seeking our colony up and 
down, and not finding them, returned with all the aforesaid 
provision unto England," the colonists having really departed 
" out of that paradise of the world," as Hakluyt says — in ves- 
sels furnished by Sir Francis Drake. Then followed Sir Rich- 
ard Grenville with three vessels ; but he could find neither 
relief-ship nor colony, and after some time spent in the, same 
game of hide-and-seek, he landed fifteen men in the island of 
Roanoke, with two years' provisions, to take possession of the 
country. Then, in 1587, went three ships containing a col- 
ony of one hundred and fifty, under John White, with a char- 
tered and organized corps of twelve assistants, under the sono- 
rous name of " Governor and Assistants of the City of Raleigh 
in Virginia." They looked for Grenville's fifteen men, but 
found them not, and found only deer grazing on the melons 
that had grown within the roofless houses of Lane's colony. 
In spite of these dark omens, the new settlement was formed, 
and on the i8th of August, 1587 — as we read in Captain John 
Smith's " Generall Historic of Virginia, New England, and the 



"AN ENGLISH NATION." 1 39 

Summer Isles " — " Ellinor, the Governour's daughter, and wife 
to Ananias Dare, was deUvered of a daughter, in Roanoak, 
which, being the first Christian there borne, was called Vir- 
ginia." Here at least was something permanent, definite, es- 
tablished — a birth and a christening, the beginning of "an 
English nation," transferred to American soil. 

Alas ! in all this pathetic series of dissolving hopes and lost 
colonies, the career of the little Virginia is the most touching. 
Governor White, going back to England for supplies soon 
after the birth of his grandchild, left in the colony eighty-nine 
men, seventeen women, and eleven children. He was detained 
three years, and on his return, in August, 1590, he found no 
trace of the colony except three letters "curiously carved" upon 
a tree — the letters CRO — and elsewhere, upon another tree, the 
word "CROATOAN." It had been agreed beforehand that 
should the colony be removed, the name of their destination 
should be carved somewhere conspicuously, and that if they 
were in distress a cross should be carved above. These trees 
bore no cross ; but the condition of the buildings and buried 
chests of the colony indicated the work of savages. " Though 
it much grieved me," writes the anxious and wandering father 
in his narrative, "yet it did much comfort me that I did know 
they were at Croatoan." Before the ships could seek the isl- 
and of Croatoan they were driven out to sea; but apparently 
those in charge of the expedition had resolved not to seek it. 
Governor White being but a passenger, and they having al- 
ready anchored near that island and seen no signals of dis- 
tress. Twenty years after, Powhatan confessed to Captain John' 
Smith that he had been at the murder of the colonists. Stra- 
chey, secretary of the Jamestown settlement, found a report 
among the Indians of a race who dwelt in stone houses, which 
they had been taught to build by those English who had es- 
caped the slaughter of Roanoke — these being farther specified 
as "fower men, two boyes, and one yonge mayde," whom a 



140 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

certain chief had preserved as his slaves. Furthermore, the 
first Virginia settlers found at an Indian village a boy of ten, 
with yellow hair and whitish skin, who may have been a de- 
scendant of these ill-fated survivors. Thus vanishes from 
history the last of the lost colonies and every trace of Vir- 
ginia Dare. 

The first colonists farther north met wath equal failure but 
less of tragedy. No children were born to them, no Christian 
maiden ever drifted away in the unfathomable ocean of Indian 
mystery; they consisted of men only, and this helped to ex- 
plain their forlorn career. Bartholomew Gosnold crossed the 
Atlantic in 1602, following the route of Ribaut, who had 
wished to establish what are now called "ocean lanes" — at 
least so far as to keep the French vessels away from the 
Spaniards by following a more northern track. Gosnold land- 
ed at Cape Ann, then crossed Massachusetts Bay to Province- 
town, and built a shelter on the Island of Cuttyhunk (called 
by him Elizabeth Island), in Buzzard's Bay. His house was 
fortified with palisades, thatched with sedge, and furnished 
with a cellar, which has been identified in recent times.. He 
saw deer on the island, but no inhabitants ; and the soil was 
"overgrown with wood and rubbish" — the latter including sas- 
safras, young cherry-trees, and grape-vines. Here he wintered, 
but if he ever meant to found a colony — which is now doubted 
— it failed for want of supplies, and his vessel, the Concord, 
returned with all on board, his eight seamen and twenty 
planters, to England. They arrived there, as Gosnold wrote 
to his father, without "one cake of bread, nor any drink but 
a little vinegar left." But he had a cargo of sassafras root 
which was worth more than vinegar or bread, though it yielded 
little profit to Gosnold, since it was confiscated by Raleigh as 
being sole patentee of the region visited. This fragrant shrub, 
then greatly prized as a medicine, drew to America another ex- 
pedition, following after Gosnold's, and headed by Mar^n Pring. 



"AN ENGLISH NATION." I41 

He sailed the next year (1603) with two vessels and forty-four 
men, not aiming at colonization, but at trade. He anchored 
either at Plymouth or Edgartown, built a palisaded fort to 
protect his sassafras - hunters, but found the Indians very in- 
convenient neighbors, and returned home. Waymouth came 
two years later, and sailed sixty miles up the Kennebec or 
Penobscot — it is not yet settled which — and pronounced it 
"the most rich, beautiful, large, and secure harboring river that 
the world affordeth." But he did not stay long, and except 
for his enthusiasm over the coifntry, and the fact that he car- 
ried home five Indians, his t^p counted for no more than 
Pring's. Meanwhile De Monts and Champlain were busy in 
exploring on the part of the French ; and Sir Ferdinando 
Gorges was planning one more fruitless colony for the English. 

Gorges was probably a kinsman of Raleigh ; he knew 
Waymouth, and took charge for three years of some of his 
Indian captives. With Sir John Popham he secured the in- 
corporation of two colonies — to be called the First and the 
Second, and to be under charge of the Council of Virginia, 
appointed by the crown. The First, or London Colony, was 
to be planted in " South Virginia," from north latitude 34° to 
38°, and the Second, or Plymouth Colony, was to be planted 
in "North Virginia," between 41° and 45° north latitude. Nei- 
ther colony was to extend more than fifty miles inland, and 
there was to be an interval of a hundred miles between their 
nearest settlements. That gap of a hundred miles afterwards 
caused a great deal of trouble. 

Three ships with a hundred settlers went from Plymouth, 
England, in 1607, reaching the mouth of the Sagadahoc, or 
Kennebec, August 8th. They held religious services accord- 
ing to the Church of England, read their patent publicly, and 
proceeded to dig wells, build houses, and erect a fort. Mis- 
fortune pursued them. Nearly half their number went back 
with the vessels. The winter was unusually severe. Their 



142 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



storehouse was burned ; their president, George Popham, died ; 
their patron in England, Sir John Popham, died also ; their 




C^hefe are the Lines thatjliew tliyTace;hutthofo 

*Jlia.tjTiew thy Ol^aCC andCfloV}'', hrujliter hec : 

nliy Fairc-J>ilcoueries atid :Fo\vlc- Over throwes 

OJ^ Salvages, muck Clvillizd. hy t/iee-K S^ 

Bcjijkcw thy Sfiritjand to it: Glorj (^ynJ<,_ 

So.tkoa art JBrafsC wit/iout,hut Q^olde^ M'ttkitv . 



" admiral," Raleigh Gilbert, was recalled to England by the 
death of his brother. In the spring all returned, and another 



"AN ENGLISH NATION" 1 43 

colony was added to the list of unsuccessful attempts. It is 
useless to speculate on what might have been the difference 
in the destiny of New England had it succeeded ; it failed, 
and the world never cares very much for failures. The con- 
temporary verdict was that " the country was branded by the 
return of that plantation as being over -cold, and, in respect 
of that, not habitable for Englishmen." But the fortunate fact 
that two colonies were sent out together made the year 1607 
the beginning of successful colonization in America, after all. 
The enterprise succeeded, not in New England, then called 
North Virginia, but in South Virginia, part of which territory 
still retains the name of the Virgin Queen. It succeeded 
not under the high-sounding name of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, 
but under the more plebeian auspices of John Smith. 

John Smith was the last of the romantic school of explor- 
ers. It is impossible to tell who wrote all his numerous books, 
or where to draw the line in regard to his innumerable ad- 
ventures. We shall never know the whole truth about Poca- 
hontas or Powhatan. No matter; he was the ideal sailor, labor- 
ing to be accurate in all that relates to coasts and soundings, 
absolutely credulous as to all the wilder aspects of enterprise 
in a new world. He maintained the traditions of wonder ; he 
would not have been surprised at Job Hartop's merman, or 
Ponce de Leon's old men made young, or Raleigh's headless 
Indians, or Champlain's Gougou. The flavor of all his narra- 
tives is that of insatiable and joyous adventure, not yet shad- 
owed by that awful romance of supernatural terror which came 
in with the Puritans. 

Yet his first service was in his accuracy of description. It 
is a singular fact pointed out by Kohl, that while the sixteenth 
century placed upon our maps with much truth the coasts of 
Newfoundland, Labrador, and Canada, the coasts of New Eng- 
land and New York were unknown till the beginning of the 
seventeenth. When Hudson sailed south of Cape Cod and 



144 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



entered the harbor of New York, he was justified in saying 
that he entered "an unknown sea." If the shore north of 




Ttl 



-^"7 PO^WHATAN" ^-»-^" 

^^eId tMsJiate &Lya/?iion -when Cofi: Smith "fi 
^m/as Miuered i) Mm^ri/oner 



Cape Cod was not an unknown region, it was due largely to 
Smith. While his companions were plundering or kidnapping 
negroes, at the time he first visited those shores, in 1614, he 
was drawing " a map from point to point, isle to isle, and har- 
bor to harbor, with the soundings, sands, rocks, and land- 
marks." He first called the region New England, and first 



'AN ENGLISH NATION." 



H5 




MAP OF THE NEW ENGLAND COAST, FROM CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH'S " HISTORIE 

OF VIRGINIA." 



gave the names of Charles River, Plymouth, Cape Ann ; while 
other titles which he bestowed — as Boston, Cambridge, Hull 
— have not disappeared, but only shifted their places. He 
caused thousands of his maps to be printed, and yet com- 
plained he might as well have tried "to cut rocks with oyster 
shells " as to spread among others his interest in this matter. 
Fifteen years after, he could only report the same discourage- 
ment. " The coast is yet still but as a coast unknown and 
undiscovered. I have had six or seven plots of those northern 
parts, so unlike each to other for resemblance of the country 
as they did me no more good than so much waste paper." 

This illustrates Smith's methods. But it was in his first 
expedition to Virginia that he placed himself on record as the 

lO 



146 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

first successful colonizer of America. At the time, however, 
he would have claimed no higher title than " Adventurer," 
that being the name by which the members of the London 
Company were known. The men who were sent out on this 
expedition were authorized to mine for the precious metals, 
to coin money, and to collect a revenue for twenty -one years 
from all vessels. The dream of wealth had been transplanted 
from Spain to England, and its supposed scene of enrichment 
from Mexico to " Virginia." The English plays of the period 
show this. " I tell thee," says Seagull, in Marston's play of 
"Eastward, Ho!" written in 1605, "golde is more plentifull 
there than copper is with us ; and for as much redde copper 
as I can bring I'll have thrise the weight in gold. Why, man, 
all theyre dripping pans . . . are pure gould, and all the chaines 
with which they chaine up their streets are massie gold ; and 
for rubies and diamonds,^ they go forth in Holydayes and gath- 
er 'hem by the seashore to hang on their children's coates and 
stick in their children's caps." And, to complete the picture, 
he promises "no more law than conscience, and not too much 
of eyther." 

Such were the hopes with which the three ships of the 
Virginia Company of London sailed from the Downs, January 
I, 1607. It was a modest expedition, but it carried the fort- 
unes of the " English Nation " on board. These vessels were 
the Susan Constant (100 tons), with seventy-one persons, com- 
manded by Captain Christopher Newport, fleet captain ; the 
Godspeed (40 tons), Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, with fifty- 
two persons ; and the Discovery, Captain John Ratcliffe, with 
twenty persons. There were thirty-nine of the crew, and one 
hundred and five planters, more than half classed as "gentle- 
men," with laborers, tradesmen, and mechanics, and two " chi- 
rurgeons." Sailing by the southern route — the way of the 
West Indies — they reached Chesapeake Bay on the night of 
April 26th, and there for the first time opened a sealed box 



"AN ENGLISH NATION." 147 

containing the orders from the King. This box designated 
as councillors the three sea-captains, with Edward Maria 
Wingfield (president), John Smith, John Martin, and John Ken- 
dall. Smith, however, because of some suspicion of mutinous 
bearing on the voyage, was excluded from office until June loth. 
It is possible that something of personal feeling may have 
entered into Smith's low opinion of these first colonists. He 
says of them, in his " Generall Historic :" 

" Being for most part of such lender educations, and small experience in 
Martiall accidents, because they found not English Cities, nor such fair houses, 
downe pillowes, tavernes, and ale-houses in euery breathing place, neither such 
plentie of gold and silver and dissolute libertie as they expected, had little or 
no care of anything but to pamper their bellies, to fly away with our Pinnaces, 
or procure their meanes to returne for England. For the Country was to them 
a misery, a mine, a death, a hell, and their reports here and their actions there 
according." 

They planted a cross at Fort Henry, naming it for the 
Prince of Wales, and they named the opposite cape for his 
brother, the Duke of York, afterwards Charles I. The next 
day they named another spot Point Comfort. Ascending the 
Powhatan River, called by them the James, they landed at a 
peninsula about fifty miles from the mouth, and resolved to 
build their town there. They went to work, sending Smith 
and others farther up the river to explore, and repelling the 
first Indian attack during their absence. In June Newport 
sailed for England, leaving three months' provisions for the 
colonists. Again the experiment was to be tried ; again Eng- 
lishmen found themselves alone in the New World. Captain 
John Smith, always graphic, has left a vivid picture of the 
discomforts of that early time : 

" When I first went to Virginia, I well remember, wee did hang an awning 
(which is an old saile) to three or foure trees to shadow us from the Sunne, 
our walls were rales of wood, our seats unhewed trees, till we cut plankes, our 
Pulpit a bar of wood nailed to two neighboring trees, in foule weather we 
shifted into an old rotten tent, for we Had few better, and this came by the way 
of adventure for new ; this was our Church, till wee built a homely thing like 



148 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



a barne, set upon Cratchets, covered with rafts, sedge, and earth, so was also 
the walls : the best of our houses of the like curiosity, but the most part farre 
much worse workmanship, that could neither well defend wind nor raine, yet 
wee had daily Common Prayer morning and evening, every Sunday two Ser- 
mons, and every three moneths the holy Communion, till our Minister died, 
but our Prayers daily, with an Homily on Sundaies we continued two or three 
yeares after till more Preachers came, and surely God did most mercifully heare 
us, till the continuall inundations of mistaking directions, factions, and num- 
bers of unprovided Libertines neere consumed us all, as the Israelites in the 
wildernesse." 

The place was unhealthy ; they found no gold ; the sav- 
ages were hostile ; by September one-half of their own number 

had died, .including Gos- 



nold, and their provisions 
were almost exhausted. 
The council was reduced 
to three — Ratcliffe, Smith, 
and Martin. Later still 
their settlement was burn- 
ed, and their food reduced 
to meal and water; the 
intrepid leadership of 
Smith alone saved them ; 
and for years the colony 
struggled, as did the Plym- 
outh colony a dozen years 
later, for mere existence. 
Its materials from the be- 
ginning were strangely put 
together — one mason, one 
blacksmith, four carpen- 
ters, fifty -two gentlemen, 
and a barber ! The " first 
supply" in 1608 brought 
one hundred and twenty 
more, but not in much better combination — thirty-three gentle- 




MAP OF JAMESTOWN SETTLEMENT, FROM 
CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH'S "HISTORIE OF 
VIRGINIA." 



''AN ENGLISH NATION r 149 

men, twenty-one laborers, six tailors, with apothecaries, perfum- 
ers, and goldsmiths, but still only one mechanic of the right 
sort. The "second supply," in the same year, brought seventy 
persons, including " eight Dutchmen and Poles," and, best of 
all, two women — Mistress Forrest and Anne Burras her maid 
— joined the company ; and soon after, the maid was married 
to John Laydon, "which was the first marriage," Smith tri- 
umphantly says, "we had in Virginia." Smith had by this 
time become President of the Council, and was at last its only 
member. They had received supplies from England, but the 
continuance of these was very uncertain. Newport on his 
return trip had foolishly pledged himself not to return without 
a lump of gold, the discovery of a passage to the North Sea, 
some of the settlers of the lost colony, or a freight worth 
^2000. Unless this pledge was fulfilled, the colony was to be 
abandoned to its own resources ; and fulfilled it never was. 

Early in October, 1609, Smith sailed for England, leaving 
nearly five hundred settlers, with horses, cattle, cannon, fishing 
nets, and provisions. He never returned, though he made a 
successful voyage to New England. He apparently went away 
under a cloud, but with him went the fortunes of the colony. 
There followed a period known as " the starving time," which 
ended in the abandonment of the settlement, with its fifty or 
sixty houses and its defence of palisades. The colonists were 
met as they descended the river, in April, 16 10, by Lord Del- 
aware (or De la Warr) as he ascended with another party of 
settlers ; and thenceforward the Virginia settlement was se- 
cure. Yet it did not grow strong; it was languishing in 1618, 
and it had an accession of doubtful benefit in 16 19, when we 
read in Smith's "Generall Historic," as the statement of John 
Rolfe, " About the last of August came in a Dutch man-of- 
warre, and sold us twenty Negars." In 162 1 came a more 
desirable accession, through the shipment by the company of 
" respectable young women " for wives of those colonists who 



150 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 







ARRIVAL OF THE YOUNG WOMEN AT JAMESTOWN. 



would pay the cost of transportation — at first one hundred 
and twenty pounds of tobacco, afterwards one hundred and 
fifty. In July, 1620, the colony was four thousand strong, and 
shipped to England forty thousand pounds of tobacco. This 
was raised with the aid of many bound apprentices — boys and 
girls picked up in the streets of London and sent out — and 
of many " disorderly persons " sent by order of the King. But 
in the year 1624 only 1275 colonists were left in Virginia. 

The colony would have been more, prosperous, Captain 
John Smith thought, without the tobacco. " Out of the rel- 
icks of our miseries," he says, " time and experience had 
brought that country to a great happinesse, had they not so 



"AN ENGLISH NATION." 151 

much doted on their tobacco, on whose firmest foundations 
there is small stability, there being so many good commodi- 
ties beside." But their chief trouble, as he wrote from Lon- 
don in 1 63 1 — the last year of his life — was always in the 
uncertain sway of the Virginia Company in London : " Their 
purses and lives were subject to some few here in London, 
who were never there, that consumed all in Arguments, Proj- 
ects, Conclusions, altering everything yearely, as they altered 
opinions, till they had consumed more than ^200,000 and 
neere 8000 men's lives." 

Another voyager, also English, but in Dutch employ, follow- 
ing Smith across the ocean, rivalled his fame. It was a won- 
drous period, certainly, when a continent lay unexplored before 
civilized men, and a daring navigator could at a single voyage 
add to the map a whole mighty river, whereas now it some- 
times takes many lives . to establish a few additional facts as 
to the minor sources of some well-known stream. The name 
of Henry Hudson is as indelibly associated with the river he 
discovered as is the Rhine with the feudal castles that make 
its summits picturesque. The difference is that after the last 
stone of the last ruin has crumbled, the name of the great 
navigator will be as permanent as now. While Hudson was 
exploring what he called " The Great North River of New- 
Netherlands," Champlain was within a few miles of him, on 
the lake that was to bear his name. Both he and Hudson 
were fortunate enough to have names sufficiently character- 
istic to keep their places on the map, while " Smith's Isles " 
soon yielded to the yet vaguer appellation of the " Isles of 
Shoals." 

It has been well pointed out in the most recent sketch 
of the Dutch in America — that of Mr. Fernow, in the "Nar- 
rative and Critical History of America," edited by Justin 
Winsor — that the early Dutch explorations did not proceed 
from the love of discovery or of gold -seeking, but were an 



152 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

incident of European wars. Carlyle says that the Dutch 
might have kept on making butter and cheese forever had 
not the Spaniards hurried them into a war in order to make 
them beheve in St. Ignatius. The Spaniards, he says, " never 
made them believe in him, but succeeded in breaking their 
own vertebral column, and raising the Dutch into a great 
nation." The Dutch West India Company was, according to 
Mr. Fernow, a political movement, planned in 1606, and re- 
vived in 161 8 — a scheme to destroy the results of Spanish 
conquest in America, under cover of finding a passage to 
Cathay. 

Henry Hudson sailed in the employ of this company, in 
the vessel Half-Moon, April 4, 1609. He undertook the search 
for a north-west passage — to which there was an opening 
north of Virginia, as his friend. Captain John Smith, had 
assured him. Sailing up the river which now bears his 
name, he found no passage, but brought back reports of fur- 
bearing animals, which revived the Dutch Company, and se- 
cured for it a charter, granted in 162 1. Before this Adrian 
Block had built a log fort on Manhattan Island, in 16 14, 
and had called the settlement New Amsterdam ; another 
fort was built near what is now Albany ; another in what 
is now Gloucester, New Jersey; and in 1626 Peter Minuit 
bought the whole of Manhattan Island from the Indians. 
All these settlements were supposed to be within the hun- 
dred miles which were to separate the North and South Vir- 
oinia settlements. The South Virs^inia colonists tried to drive 
out the Dutch in 16 13, and Governor Bradford, in Plymouth, 
remonstrated in 1627 against the intruders, but they remain- 
ed. The secret belief of the Dutch was that, after all, the 
English had secured only the two shells, while they had the 
oyster. For years the colony was rather like a commercial 
enterprise than like anything of larger expectations ; but 
after a time, under the teaching of experience, a more lib- 



''AN ENGLISH NATION:' 1 53 

eral policy was practised, and settlers came from many sources 
— dissatisfied religionists from New England, escaped servants 
from Virginia, and rich and poor from Holland. In 1643 
there were eighteen different nationalities represented in New 
Amsterdam. 

The English had thus obtained a foothold in Virginia, and 
the Dutch had established themselves in New Netherlands, 
both being led by the love of discovery, or of trade, or of re- 
venge against the Spaniards. All efforts had thus far failed 
to build a colony in New England. Captain Smith wrote that 
he was not so foolish as to suppose that anything but the 
prospect of great gain would induce people to settle in such 
a place. He was right ; it was done with the prospect of 
great gain, but of a kind of which he had not dreamed. It 
is partly this new motive and partly the pivotal part it played 
in the colonization of America that has always given to the 
little colony of Plymouth an historic importance out of all pro- 
portion to its numbers, its wealth, or even its permanence of 
separate life. 

The Pilgrims, as they have always been called, had sep- 
arated for conscience' sake from the Church of England, had 
removed from England to Holland, and had dwelt there in 
that " common harbor of all heresies,"' as Bishop Hall called 
it, there increasing to the number of five hundred. The 
Dutch magistrates said, " These English have lived among us 
now these twelve years, and yet we have never had any suit 
or accusation against them." But it seemed likely that the 
wars between Spain and Holland would be renewed, making 
their place of refuge unsafe; and the children of the Pilgrims 
were growing up, whom their parents wished to hear speaking 
English rather than Dutch ; and they desired also to do some- 
thing "for the propagating and advancing of the Gospel of 
Christ in the remote parts of the world." So a hundred of 
their younger and stronger men and women were selected to 



154 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

go to America, and a portion of them sailed from Delft Haven 
in July, 1620; their pious minister, John Robinson, invoking a 
blessing upon their departure, and warning them, " The Lord 
hath more truth yet to seek out of His holy Word." Of their 
two ships, the Mayiflozver alone completed her voyage, and after 
touching at three English ports she still had a voyage of 
sixty-three days. The Speedwell put back in consequence of 
alarms needlessly spread by her captain, who had already re- 
pented of his promise to remain a year with the colony, and 
took this cowardly way to obtain relief from that pledge. 

On the eastern coast of Massachusetts there is a cape 
which stretches far into the sea, " shaped like a sickle," as 
Captain John Smith said, but named less poetically " Cape 
Cod " by Gosnold, because of the multitudes of fish with which 
he had "pestered" his vessel there. If on the 9th of Novem- 
ber (Old Style), in 1620, any stray Indian had been looking 
from the bluff where Highland Light now stands, he would 
have seen a lonely and weather-beaten vessel creeping slowly 
towards the land. It was the Mayiflower, now more than two 
months at sea. She had met with such storms and had grown 
so leaky that it had been seriously proposed by the sailors, 
when half across the Atlantic, to return. But for the fact 
that some passenger had happened to bring a great iron screw 
with his baggage, it is doubtful if the little vessel could have 
made the passage. As it was, she was heavy and slow, and 
the passengers were full of joy when they saw Cape Cod. 
They very well knew what land it was, for the mates of the 
vessel had been there twice before, while one passenger had 
actually been as far as Virginia. But they did not mean to 
remain at Cape Cod, or indeed in New England at all. Ever 
since the failure of the Popham colony in Maine, twelve years 
before, New England had been thought to be a "cold, barren, 
mountainous, rocky desert," and had been abandoned as " un- 
inhabitable by Englishmen." So the Mayflowo^ did not at 



"AN ENGLISH NATION." 1 55 

first anchor at Cape Cod, but tacked and sailed southward for 
half a day, meaning to reach the Hudson River. Then she 
got among dangerous shoals and currents, the wind moreover 
being contrary; and the captain, anxious for his vessel, and in 
a hurry to land his passengers, put about again and made 
Cape Cod Harbor. 

" But here I cannot but stay and make a pause," says the 
old writer who first describes this voyage, " and stand half 
amazed at these poor people's condition; and so I think will 
the reader too, when he well considers the same. For having; 
passed through many troubles, both before and upon the voy- 
age, as aforesaid, they had now no friends to welcome them, 
nor inns to entertain and refresh them, no houses, much less 
towns, to repair unto." Before them lay an unknown wilder- 
ness. The nearest English settlement was five hundred miles 
away. They had expected to arrive in September, and it was 
November; they had expected to reach the Hudson River, 
and it was Cape Cod. " Summer being done," says the same 
writer — Bradford — "all things stand for them to look upon 
with a weather-beaten face ; and the whole country being full 
of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hue. 
If they looked behind them there was the mighty ocean which 
they had passed, and was now a main bar and gulf to separate 
them from all the civil parts of the world." To be sure, they 
had still a ship; but the captain warned them daily that they 
must look out for a place to found their colony; that he could 
wait but little longer; that the provisions were diminishing 
every day, and he must and would keep enough for himself 
and crew to use on their return. Some of the crew were 
even less friendly in what they said, for some of these were 
heard to threaten that unless the place for their new colony 
were soon found, " they would turn them and their goods on 
shore and leave them." 

Such was the position of the Pilgrims when the Mayflower 



156 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

lay at anchor in Cape Cod Harbor. The first thing to be 
done was to select a place for their settlement. This, how- 
ever, could not be done till the shallop, or sail-boat, was ready ; 
and it would take several days, as they found. So they went 
to work on this, and meanwhile, for the sake of a mutual un- 
derstanding among themselves, this agreement was drawn up 
and signed by all the men on board. 

" In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the 
loyall subiects of our dread soveraigne lord, King James, by the grace of God, 
of Great Britaine, France, and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, etc., hav- 
ing undertaken, for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian 
faith, and honour of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first colony 
in the northerne parts of Virginia, doe, by these presents, solemnly and mutu- 
ally, in the presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine our- 
selves together into a civill body politike, for our better ordering and preser- 
vation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid ; and by vertue hereof to enact, 
constitute, and frame such iust and equal lawes, ordinances, acts, constitutions, 
offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for 
the generall good of the Colony ; vnto which we promise all due submission 
and obedience. In witnesse whereof we haue hereunto siabscribed our names. 
Cape Cod, 11 of November, in the year of the raigne of our soveraigne lord 
King lames, of England, France, and Ireland 18, and of Scotland 54. Anno 
Domini 1620." 

Hfere was the "social compact" in good earnest — a thing 
which philosophers have claimed to be implied in all human 
government, but which has rarely been put in a shape so un- 
equivocal. Robinson's letter of advice to the company had 
recognized before they left Holland that they were " to be- 
come a body -politic," using among themselves civil govern- 
ment, and choosing their own rulers. As with most persons 
who write important documents, their work seemed less im- 
posing to themselves than it has since appeared to others. 
They thought of discipline rather than of philosophy ; they 
had secured a good working organization, and it was not till 
Ions after that the act was discovered to have been " the 
birth of popular constitutional liberty." Such as it was, it was 
signed by forty -one men, mostly heads of families. Against 



"AN ENGLISH NATION." I 57 

each name was placed the number represented by him, mak- 
ing a total of one hundred and one persons, though accurate- 
ly revised estimates give one more. 

This being signed, the people were eager to go on shore 
and examine the new country, even by venturing a little way. 
So a party landed for fuel, a portion of them being armed ; 
they saw neither person nor house, but brought home a boat- 
load of juniper boughs, " which smelled very sweet and strong," 
and which became a frequent fuel with them. Then the 
women went ashore under guard the next Monday to do their 
washing, and we may well suppose that some of the twenty- 
eight children begged hard to go also, and offered much des- 
ultory aid in bringing water, while the men guarded and the 
women scrubbed. The more they knew of the land, the more 
they wished to know, and at last it was agreed that Captain 
Miles Standish and sixteen men, " with every man his musket, 
sword, and corselet," should be sent along the cape to explore. 
The muskets were matchlocks, and the corselet was a coat of 
mail, a heavy garment to be worn amid tangled woods and 
over weary sands. 

The journal kept by this first party has been preserved. 
They found walnuts, strawberries, and vines, and came to some 
springs, where they sat down and drank their first New Eng- 
land water, as one of them says, " with as much delight as ever 
we drunk drink in all our lives." They saw no Indians, but 
found their houses and graves ; they found also a basket hold- 
ing three or four bushels of Indian corn of yellow, red, and 
blue, such as still grows in Cape Cod. This they took with 
them on their return, meaning to pay for it, which they after- 
wards did. Then they returned, and a few days after another 
party, twice as large, and including the captain of the Alay- 
flower, set off in the shallop to make further explorations. 
All their adventures are preserved to us in the most graphic 
way by contemporary narratives. Then a third party of eight- 



158 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

een went out, including Carver, Standish, Bradford, and other 
leading men. They were attacked by Indians ; they lost their 
rudder and their mast ; they drifted at last on Clark's Island, 
kept the Sabbath there, and on the nth December, Old Style 
— commonly reckoned, but not quite accurately, as correspond- 
ing to the 2 2d of December, New Style — they made their first 
landing on Plymouth Rock. This place being approved, they 
returned to the Mayfloivcr, and the vessel came into harbor 
five days later. 

There they spent the winter — their first experience of a 
New England winter ! They were ill housedj ill fed ; part of 
them remained for several months on board the ship ; one-half 
of them died during the first winter of scurvy and other dis- 
eases. At times, according to the diary of the heroic Brad- 
ford, there were but six or seven sound persons who could 
tend upon the sick and dying, "fetched them wood, made 
them fires, dressed them meat, made their beds, washed their 
loathsome clothes, clothed and unclothed them," two of these 
nurses being their spiritual and military leaders, Elder Brew- 
ster and Captain Miles Standish. The New Plymouth Col- 
ony never grew to be a strong one ; its later history is merged 
in that of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, to which it led ; but 
its success may be said to have been the turning-point in the 
existence of Raleigh's " English nation." The situation is 
thus briefly stated by the ablest historian who wrote in this 
continent before the Revolution, Governor Hutchinson : 

"These were the founders of the colony of Plymouth. The settlement 
of this colony occasioned the settlement of Massachusetts Bay, which was the 
source of all the other colonies of New England. Virginia was in a dying 
state, and seemed to revive and flourish from the example of New England. 
I am not preserving from oblivion the names of heroes whose chief merit is 
the overthrow of cities, provinces, and empires, but the names of the found- 
ers of a flourishing town and colony, if not of the whole British empire in 
America." 

In September, 1628, there came sailing into the harbor of 



'AN ENGLISH NATION." 



l6i 



Naumkeag, afterwards called Salem, a ship bearing J(jhn En- 
dicott, one of the six patentees of the " Dorchester Company," 
afterwards enlarged into the " Governor and Company of Mas- 




JOHN ENDICOTT. 



sachusetts Bay." Endicott had been appointed governor, and 
found on shore only a few settlers, Roger Conant and others, 
part of them strays from Plymouth, who were quite disposed to 
be impatient of his authority. There remains no record of his 

1 1 



l62 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. . 

voyage, but an ample record of that of his successor in the 
emigration, Rev. Francis Higginson, who came as the spiritual 
leader — with his colleague Skelton — of the first large party 
of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They came in summer 
(1629), and all their early impressions were in poetic contrast 
to the stern landing of the Pilgrims. Francis Higginson says, 
in his journal as preserved in Hutchinson's Collection : 

" By noon we were within three leagues of Cape Ann ; and as we sailed 
along the coasts we saw every hill and dale and every island full of gay woods 
and high trees. The nearer we came to the shore the more flowers in abun- 
dance, sometimes scattered abroad, sometimes joined in sheets nine or ten 
yards long, which we supposed to be brought from the low meadows by the 
tide. Now what with fine woods and green trees by land, and these yellow 
flowers painting the sea, made us all desirous to see our new paradise of New 
England, whence we saw such forerunning signals of fertility afar off."' 

There came in this expedition five (or possibly six) ships, 
of which the Mayflower was one. They brought two hundred 
persons ; whereas only some forty had arrived with Endicott ; 
in the following year eight hundred came with Winthrop, who, 
being governor of the company itself, superseded all other 
authorities. It was the most powerful body of colonists that 
had yet reached America. Its members were by no means 
limited to Salem, nor did this long remain the centre of the 
colony. Charlestown was settled in 1629, and Dorchester, 
Roxbury, Boston, Medford, Watertown, and Cambridge in 1630. 

The company itself was transplanted bodily from England. 
It was an organized government under a royal charter; the 
freemen were to meet four times a year and choose a gov- 
ernor, deputy -governor, and eighteen assistants, who were to 
meet once a month, and exercise all the functions of a State. 
As Mr. Lodge has tersely said, " It was the migration of a 
people, not the mere setting forth of colonists and adventur- 
ers." Considered as a colony, it was far larger and richer 
than that at Plymouth ; it had chosen a more favorable situa- 



"AN ENGLISH NATION." 



163 



tion, and it encountered less of hardship, though it had quite 
enough. Its leaders had not expected, in advance, to break 
with the Church of England, as had been done by the " Sep- 
aratists " at Plymouth. " We will not say," said Francis Hig- 
ginson, on looking back to the receding shores of England — 




JOHN WINTHROP. 



" we will not say, as the Separatists were wont to say at their 
leaving of England, ' Farewell, Babylon ! farewell, Rome !' but 
we will say, ' Farewell, dear England ! farewell, the Church of 
God in England, and all the Christian friends there.' . . . We 
go to practise the positive part of Church reformation, and to 
propagate the Gospel in America." 

Yet, when once established on this soil, there was not 



1 64 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

much difference in degree of independence between the two 
colonies. Indeed Endicott, when he sent back two turbulent 
Churchmen to England, — or when he defaced the cross, then 
deemed idolatrous, upon the English flag, — or when he sup- 
pressed Morton and his roisterers at Merry Mount, — went far- 
ther in the assertion of separate power than the milder au- 
thorities of Plymouth Colony ever went. Both colonies aimed 
at religious reformation. Neither colony professed religious 
toleration, though the Plymouth colony sometimes practised 
it. Rhode Island, on its establishment by Roger Williams, 
both professed and practised it ; and though his banishment 
from Massachusetts was not on religious grounds alone, but 
partly from his contentious spirit in other ways, yet it re- 
sulted in good to the world, at last, through his high concep- 
tions of religious liberty. In the New Hampshire settlements, 
which were formed as early as 1623, there was less of strict- 
ness in religion, and perhaps less of religion ; nor was there 
ever any great rigidity of doctrine or practice in the few scat- 
tered villages of Maine. The two Connecticut colonies — Con- 
necticut and New Haven — being framed at first by the direct 
emigration of whole religious societies, might have been sup- 
posed to carry some severity with them into their banishment; 
but they seemed to leave it behind, and were not sterner at 
the outset than the men of the other early settlements, even 
those of Virginia. What changes came over this type of man- 
hood in the second generation, in the banishment of a colony 
and the asceticism of a life too restricted, we shall see. But 
these New England men were, at the outset, of as high a 
mould as ever settled a State. " God sifted a whole nation," 
said Stoughton, " that He might send choice grain over into 
this wilderness." Between the years 1629 and 1639, twenty 
thousand Puritans came to America; it was not a mere col- 
onization, it was the transfer of a people. 

Thus were four colonies established on the North Atlantic 



"AN ENGLISH xNATIONr 165 

coast before the year 1630, in the vast region once called 
Viroinia. Three of them were Eng^hsh at the beeinnino" — 
Virginia, New Plymouth, and Massachusetts Bay — and the 
other was destined to become such, chanQ^ing^ its name from 
New Netherlands to New York. These may be called the 
pioneer colonies; and if we extend our view to the year 1650, 
we take in three other colonies, Connecticut, Rhode Island, 
New Haven — which had gone forth from these — while two 
independent colonies, one English and one Swedish, had made 
separate settlements in Maryland and Delaware ; thus making- 
nine in all, of which seven were English. 

The men of the Maryland settlement also called them- 
selves, like those of Plymouth, " Pilgrims," but the name had 
not come to them by such arduous experience, and it has not 
attached itself to their descendants. The Roman Catholics 
and others who came to " Mary's Land " in the Ark and the 
Dove.m. March, 1634, under Leonard Calvert, named their first 
settlement St. Mary's, in honor of Queen Henrietta Maria, and 
they called themselves " the Pilgrims of St. Mary's." The 
emigration was made up very differently from those which 
John Smith recorded in Virginia, for it consisted of but twen- 
ty " gentlemen " and three hundred laboring men. They came 
under a charter granted to George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, 
who had for many years been trying to establish a colony, 
which he called " Avalon," much farther north, and who had 
grown, in the words of a letter of the period, " weary of his 
intolerable plantation at Newfoundland, where he hath found 
between eight and nine months' winter, and upon the land 
nothing but rocks, lakes, or morasses like bogs, which one 
might thrust a pike down to the butt -head." But he died 
before the new charter was signed ; and was succeeded by his 
son Cecil, the second Lord Baltimore, who fully adopted his 
father's plans, and amply defrayed the cost of the first expedi- 
tion, this being ^40,000. 

1 1* 



i66 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



There exists a graphic account of the voyage of the first 
Maryland settlers by Father White, their chaplain, in his re- 




CECIL CALVERT, SECOND LORD BALTIMORE. 

port to his religious superiors at Rome. He describes with 
delio-ht his first ascent of the Potomac River, of which he 



"AN ENGLISH NATION." 167 

says, " The Thames itself is a mere rivulet to it ;" and when 
he reaches the St. Mary's River, where the colony was found- 
ed (March 27, 1634), he says, "The finger of God is in this, 
and He purposes some great benefit to this nation." He 
might well say that, for the career of the early Maryland col- 
ony was peaceful, tolerant, and honorable. It was the most 
nearly independent and self-governing of the early colonies, 
the King asking nothing of it but two Indian arrows each 
year,'aiid" one - fifth of its gold or silver. It was called "the 
land of the sanctuary ;" all Christians were tolerated there, 
though it did not, like Rhode Island, expressly extend its tol- 
eration beyond Christianity. By degrees it passed under the 
charge of Puritans from Virginia, who proved themselves less 
liberal to Roman Catholics than the latter had been to them. 
But all working together laid the foundation of a new com- 
munity, sharing in some respects the pursuits and destinies of 
Virginia, though more peaceful, and at times more prosperous. 
The other independent colony came from Sweden — the 
only one ever planted by that nation. In the first years of 
Virginia emigration Lord Delaware, who was then governor, 
sailed up the river that took his name ; but he left no settle- 
ment there. The Dutch afterwards tried to colonize it, but 
the Indians destroyed the colony. Then the great Protestant 
King of. Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, the " Lion of the North," 
resolved, at the su^Qrestion of a Stockholm merchant, William 
Usselinx, to found a colony, which, unlike Virginia, should 
have no slaves, and which should be " the jewel of his king- 
dom." He died, and his little daughter Christina succeeded 
him ; but the Prime-niinister, Oxenstiern, carried out the orig- 
inal plan, sending fifty Swedes and Finlanders, in 1638, in two u 
vessels commanded by Peter Minuit, who had previously been 
Governor of New Netherlands. In spite of the loud protesta- 
tions of the Dutch governor, Kieft, they established them- 
selves on the river Delaware, and called their fort Christiana, 



1 68 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

in honor of the young queen. Four years after, a governor 
was sent out to them from Sweden, a lieutenant -colonel in 
the Swedish army, John Printz, described by one writer as a 
person "who weighed four hundred pounds, and drank three 
drinks at every meal." He built himself a house, let us hope 
on firm foundations, upon what is now called Province Island, 
at the mouth of the Schuylkill River. Meanwhile, the Eng- 
lish from New Haven had settled within the bounds of the 
colony, and the Dutch had driven them away, and then tres- 
passed themselves. Nevertheless there was a Swedish colony 
thus established in America, rivalling the Dutch of " New 
Netherlands " in enterprise and industry, but destined to pass 
away and leave hardly a trace behind. 

Such were the beginnings of European colonization along 
the Atlantic coast of North America. In the middle of the 
seventeenth century (1650) the condition of that coast was as 
follows. The New England colonies were of course English, 
and so were Virginia and Maryland ; but the fertile region 
between these northern and southern colonies was claimed 
and. occupied, as has been shown, by Holland and by Sweden. 
The French claimed the unsettled regions now known as the 
Carolinas and Georgia; the Spaniards held all beyond. Amid 
all these conflicting nationalities, what had become of Raleigh's 
dream } The seven English colonies, arranged in order of 
time, were as follows: Virginia, founded in 1607, and called to 
this day " the Old Dominion ;" New Plymouth, founded in 
1620, and still often called "the Old Colony;" Massachusetts 
Bay, 1628; Connecticut, 1633; Maryland, 1634; Rhode Island 
and Providence Plantations, 1636; New Haven, 1638. Four 
of these — the two Massachusetts and the two Connecticut 
colonies — had been leagued together since 1643 against the 
Indians and the Dutch; the others stood alone, each for itself. 
Among these scattered settlements, where was Raleigh's " Eng- 
lish nation?" It existed in these germs. 



VII. 
THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. 

EUROPEAN history makes much of the "Seven Years' 
War " and the " Thirty Years' War ;" and when we think 
of a continuous national contest for even the least of those 
periods, there is something terrible in the picture. But the 
feeble English colonies in America, besides all the difificul- 
ties of pioneer life, had to sustain a warfare that lasted, with 
few intermissions, for about a hundred years. It was, more- 
over, a warfare against the most savage and stealthy enemies, 
gradually trained and re-enforced by the most formidable mili- 
tary skill of Europe. Without counting the early feuds, such 
as the Pequot War, there elapsed almost precisely a century 
from the accession of King Philip, in 1662, to the Peace of 
Paris, which nominally ended the last French and Indian War 
in 1763. During this whole period, with pacific intervals that 
sometimes lasted for years, the same essential contest went 
on ; the real question being, for the greater part of the time, 
whether France or Enoland should control the continent. 
The description of this prolonged war may therefore well 
precede any general account of the colonial or provincial life 
in America. 

The early explorers of the Atlantic coast usually testify 
that they found the Indians a gentle, not a ferocious, people. 
They were as ready as could be expected to accept the friend- 
ship of the white race. In almost every case of quarrel the 



I/O HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

white men were the immediate aggressors, and where they 
were attacked without seeming cause — as when Smith's Vir- 
ginian colony was assailed by the Indians in the first fortnight 
of its existence — there is good reason to think that the act of 
the Indians was in revenge for wrongs elsewhere. One of 
the first impulses of the early explorers was to kidnap natives 
for exhibition in Europe, in order to excite the curiosity of 
kings or the zeal of priests ; and even where these captives 
were restored unharmed, the distrust could not be removed. 
Add to this the acts of plunder, lust, or violence, and there 
was plenty of provocation given from the very outset. 

The disposition to cheat and defraud the Indians has been 
much exaggerated, at least as regards the English settlers. 
The early Spanish invaders made no pretence of buying one 
foot of land from the Indians, whereas the English often went 
through the form of purchase, and very commonly put in prac- 
tice the reality. The Pilgrims, at the very beginning, took 
baskets of corn from an Indian grave to be used as seed, and 
paid for it afterwards. The year after the Massachusetts col- 
ony was founded, the court decreed: " It is ordered that Josias 
Plastowe shall (for stealing four baskets of corne from the In- 
dians) returne them eight baskets againe, be fined five pounds, 
and hereafter called by the name of Josias, and not Mr., as 
formerly he used to be." As a mere matter of policy, it was 
the general disposition of the English settlers to obtain lands 
by honest sale; indeed, Governor Josiah Winslow, of Plymouth, 
declared, in reference to King Philip's War, that " before these 
present troubles broke out the English did not possess one 
foot of land in this colony but what was fairly obtained by 
honest purchase of the Indian proprietors." This policy was 
quite general. Captain West, in 1610, bought the site of what 
is now Richmond, Virginia, for some copper. The Dutch 
Governor Minuit bought the island of Manhattan, in 1626, for 
sixty gilders. Lord Baltimore's company purchased land for 



THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. IJl 

cloth, tools, and trinkets ; the Swedes obtained the site of 
Christiana for a kettle ; Roger Williams bought the island of 
Rhode Island for forty fathoms of white beads ; and New 
Haven was sold to the whites, in 1638, for "twelve coats of 
English cloth, twelve alchemy spoons, twelve hoes, twelve 
hatchets, twelve porringers, twenty -four knives, and twenty- 
four cases of French knives and spoons." Many other such 
purchases will be found recorded by Dr. Ellis. And though 
the price paid might often seem ludicrously small, yet we must 
remember that a knife or a hatchet was really worth more to 
an Indian than many square miles of wild land; while even 
the beads were a substitute for wampum, or wompom, which 
was their circulating medium in dealing with each other and 
with the whites, and was worth, in 1660, five shillings a 
fathom. 

So far as the mere bargaining went, the Indians were not 
individually the sufferers in the early days ; but we must re- 
member that behind all these transactions there often lay a 
theory which was as merciless as that quoted in a previous 
paper from the Spanish " Requisition," and which would, if log- 
ically carried out, have made all these bargainings quite super- 
fluous. Increase Mather begins his history of King Philip's 
War with this phrase, " That the Heathen People amongst 
whom we live, and whose Land the Lord God of our Fathers 
hath given to us for a rightful Possession ;" and it was this 
attitude of hostile superiority that gave the sting to all the 
relations of the two races. If a quarrel rose, it was apt to be 
the white man's fault; and after it had arisen, even the hu- 
maner Englishmen usually sided with their race, as when the 
peaceful Plymouth men went to war in defence of the Wey- 
mouth reprobates. This fact, and the vague feeling that an 
irresistible pressure was displacing them, caused most of the 
early Indian outbreaks. And when hostilities had once arisen, 
it was very rare for a white man of English birth to be found 



172 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

fighting against his own people, although it grew more and 
more common to find Indians on both sides. 

As time went on, each party learned from the other. In 
the early explorations, as of Champlain and Smith, we see the 
Indians terrified by their first sight of fire-arms, but soon be- 
coming skilled in the use of them. " The King, with fortie 
Bowmen to guard me," says Captain John Smith, in 1608, 
"entreated me to discharge my Pistoll, which they there pre- 
sented to me, with a mark at sixscore to strike therewith ; but 
to spoil the practise I broke the cocke, whereat they were 
much discontented." But writing more than twenty years 
later, in 1631, he says of the Virginia settlers, "The loving 
Salvages their kinde friends they trained up so well to shoot 
in a Peace [fowling-piece] to hunt and kill them fowle, they 
became more expert than our own countrymen." La Hontan, 
writing in 1703, says of the successors of those against whom 
Champlain had first used fire-arms, " The Strength of the Iro- 
quese lies in engaging with Fire Arms in a Forrest, for they 
shoot very dexterously." They learned also to make more 
skilful fortifications, and to keep a regular watch at night, 
which in the time of the early explorers they had omitted. 
The same La Hontan says of the Iroquois, " They are as neg- 
ligent in the night-time as they are vigilant in the day." 

But it is equally true that the English colonists learned 
much in the way of forest warfare from the Indians. The 
French carried their imitation so far that they often disguised 
themselves to resemble their allies, with paint, feathers, and all ; 
it was sometimes impossible to tell in an attacking party which 
warriors were French and which were Indians. Without often 
poino- so far as this, the Engrlish colonists still modified their 
tactics. At first they seemed almost irresistible because of 
their armor and weapons. In the very first year of the Plym- 
outh settlement, when report was brought that their friend 
Massasoit had been attacked by the Narragansets, and a 



> 



THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. 1 73 

friendly Indian had been killed, the colony sent ten armed 
men, including Miles Standish, to the Indian town of Namas- 
ket (now Middleborough) to rescue or revenge their friend ; 
and they succeeded in their enterprise, surrounding the chief's 
house, and frightening every one in a large Indian village by 
two discharges of their muskets. 

But the heavy armor gradually proved a doubtful advan- 
tage against a stealthy and light-footed foe. In spite of the 
superior physical strength of the Englishman, he could not 
travel long distances through the woods or along the sands 
without lightening his weight. He learned also to fight from 
behind a tree, to follow a trail, to cover his body with hemlock 
boughs for disguise when scouting. Captain Church states 
in his own narrative that he learned from his Indian soldiers 
to march his men "thin and scattering" through the woods; 
that the English had previously, according to the Indians, 
" kept in a heap together, so that it was as easy to hit them 
as to hit a house." Even the advantage of fire-arms involved 
the risk of being without ammunition, so that the Rhode 
Island colony, by the code of laws adopted in 1647, required 
that every man between seventeen and seventy should have 
a bow with four arrows, and exercise with them ; and that 
each father should furnish every son from seven to seventeen 
years old with a bow, two arrows, and shafts, and should bring 
them up to shooting. If this statute was violated a fine was 
imposed, which the father must pay for the son, the master 
for the servant, deducting it in the latter case from his wages. 

Less satisfactory was the change by which the taking of 
scalps came to be a recognized part of colonial warfare. Han- 
nah Dustin, who escaped from Indian captivity in 1698, took 
ten scalps with her own hand, and was paid for them. Cap- 
tain Church, undertaking his expedition against the Eastern 
Indians, in 1705, after the Deerfield massacre, announced that 
he had not hitherto permitted the scalping of " Canada men," 



174 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

but should thenceforth allow it. In 1722, when the Massachu- 
setts colony sent an expedition against the village of "praying 
Indians," founded by Father Rasle, they offered for each scalp 
a bounty of ^15, afterwards increased to ^100; and this in- 
humanity was so far carried out that the French priest himself 
was one of the victims. Jeremiah Bumstead, of Boston, made 
this entry in his almanac in the same year: "Aug. 22, 28 
Indian scalps brought to Boston, one of which was Bombazen's 
[an Indian chief] and one fryer Raile's." Two years after, the 
celebrated but inappropriately named Captain Lovewell, the 
foremost Indian fighter of his region, came upon ten Indians 
asleep round a pond ; he and his men killed and scalped them 
all, and entered Dover, New Hampshire, bearing the ten scalps 
stretched on hoops and elevated on poles. After receiving an 
ovation in Dover the}' went by water to Boston, and were paid 
a thousand pounds for their scalps. Yet Love well's party was 
always accompanied by a chaplain, and had prayers every 
morninor and evenino^. 

The most painful aspect of the whole practice lies in the 
fact that it was not confined to those actually engaged in fight- 
ing, but that the colonial authorities actually established a 
tariff of prices for scalps, including even non-combatants — so 
much for a man's, so much for a woman's, so much for a 
child's. Dr. Ellis has lately pointed out the striking circum- 
stance that whereas William Penn had declared the person 
of an Indian to be "sacred," his grandson, in 1764, offered 
$134 for the scalp of an Indian man, $130 for that of a boy 
under ten, and $50 for that of a woman or girl. The habit 
doubtless began in the fury of retaliation, and was continued 
in order to conciliate Indian allies; and when bounties were 
offered to them, the white volunteers naturally claimed a share. 
But there is no doubt that Puritan theology helped the adop- 
tion of the practice. It was partly because the Indian was 
held to be something worse than a beast that he was treated 



THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. 1 75 

with very little mercy. The truth is that he was viewed as 
a fiend, and there could not be much scruple about using in- 
humanities against a demon. Cotton Mather calls Satan " the 
old landlord " of the American wilderness, and says in his 
" Magnalia :" " These Parts were then covered with Nations of 
Barbarous Indians and Infidels, in whom the Prince of the 
Power of the Air did work as a Spirit; nor could it be ex- 
pected that Nations of Wretches whose whole religion was 
the most Explicit sort of Devil -Worship should not be acted 
by the Devil to engage in some early and bloody Action for 
the Extinction of a Plantation so contrary to his Interests as 
that of New England was." 

Before the French influence began to be felt there was 
very little union on the part of the Indians, and each colony 
adjusted its own relations with them. At the time of the 
frightful Indian massacre in the Virginia colony (March 22, 
1622), when three hundred and forty- seven men, women, and 
children were murdered, the Plymouth colony was living in 
entire peace with its savage neighbors. " We have found the 
Indians," wrote Governor Winslow, "very faithful to their cov- 
enants of peace with us, very loving and willing to pleasure 
us. We go with them in some cases fifty miles into the coun- 
try, and walk as safely and peaceably in the woods as in the 
highways of England." The treaty with Massasoit lasted for 
more than fifty years, and the first bloodshed between the 
Plymouth men and the Indians was incurred in the protection 
of the colony of Weymouth, which had brought trouble on 
itself in 1623. The Connecticut settlements had far more 
difficulty with the Indians than those in Massachusetts, but 
the severe punishment inflicted on the Pequots in 1637 quieted 
the savages for a long time. In that fight a village of seventy 
wigwams was destroyed by a force of ninety white men and 
several hundred friendly Indians; and Captain Underbill, the 
second in command, has left a quaint delineation of the attack. 



176 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

There was a period resembling peace in the Eastern colo- 
nies for nearly forty years after the Pequot war, while in Vir- 
ginia there were renewed massacres in 1644 and 1656. But 
the first organized Indian outbreak began with the conspiracy 
of King Philip in 1675, although the seeds had been sown 
before that chief succeeded to power in 1662. In that year 
Wamsutta, or Alexander, Philip's brother — both being sons 
of Massasoit — having fallen under some suspicion, was either 
compelled or persuaded by Major Josiah Winslow, afterwards 
the first native-born Governor of Plymouth, to visit that settle- 
ment. The Indian came with his whole train of warriors and 
women, including his Queen, the celebrated " squaw sachem " 
Weetamo, and they stayed at Winslow's house. Here the 
chief fell ill. The day was very hot, and though Winslow 
offered his horse to the chief, it was refused, because there 
was none for his squaw or the other women. He was sent 
home because of illness, and died before he got half-way home. 
This is the story as told by Hubbard, but not altogether con- 
firmed by other authorities. If true, it is interesting as con- 
firming the theory of that careful student, Mr. Lucien Carr, 
that the early position of women among the Indians was 
higher than has been generally believed. It is pretty certain, 
at any rate, that Alexander's widow, Weetamo, believed her 
husband to have been poisoned by the English, and she ulti- 
mately sided with Philip when the war broke out, and appar- 
ently led him and other Indians to the same view as to the 
poisoning. It is evident that from the time of Philip's acces- 
sion to authority, whatever he may have claimed, his mind was 
turned more and more aoainst the English. 

It is now doubted whether the war known as King Philip's 
War was the result of such deliberate and organized action 
as was formerly supposed, but about the formidable strength 
of the outbreak there can be no question. It began in June, 
1675; Philip was killed August 12, 1676, and the war was 



THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. 177 

prolonged at the eastward for nearly two years after his death. 
Ten or twelve Puritan towns were utterly destroyed, many 
more damaged, and five or six hundred men were killed or 
missing. The war cost the colonists ^100,000, and the Plym- 
outh colony was left under a debt exceeding the whole valua- 
tion of its property — a debt ultimately paid, both principal 
and interest. On the other hand, the war tested and cemented 
the league founded in 1643 between four colonies — Massachu- 
setts, Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut — against the 
Indians and Dutch, while this prepared the way more and 
more for the extensive combinations that came after. In this 
early war, as the Indians had no French allies, so the English 
had few Indian allies; and it was less complex than the later 
contests, and so far less formidable. But it was the first real 
experience on the part of the Eastern colonists of all the 
peculiar horrors of Indian warfare — the stealthy approach, the 
abused hospitality, the early morning assault, the maimed cat- 
tle, tortured prisoners, slain infants. All the terrors that now 
attach to a frontier attack of Apaches or Comanches belonged 
to the daily life of settlers in New England and Virginia for 
many years, with one vast difference, arising from the total 
absence in those early days of any personal violence or insult 
to women. By the general agreement of witnesses from all 
nations, including the women captives themselves, this crown- 
ing crime was then wholly absent. The once famous " white 
woman," Mary Jemison, who was taken prisoner by the Sen- 
ecas at ten years old, in 1743 — who lived in that tribe all her 
life, survived two Indian husbands, and at last died at ninety 
— always testified that she had never received an insult from 
an Indian, and had never known of a captive's receiving any. 
She added that she had known few instances in the tribe of 
conjugal immorality, although she lived to see it demoralized 
and ruined by strong drink. 

The Eno-lish colonists seem never to have inflicted on the 

o 

12 



178 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Indians any cruelty resulting from sensual vices, but of barbar- 
ity of another kind there was plenty, for it was a cruel age. 
When the Narraganset fort was taken by the English, De- 
cember 19, 1675, the wigwams within the fort were all set on 
fire, against the earnest entreaty of Captain Church ; and it 
was thought that more than one-half the English loss — which 
amounted to several hundred — might have been saved had 
there been any shelter for their own wounded on that cold 
night. This, however, was a question of military necessity; 
but the true spirit of the age was seen in the punishments 
inflicted after the war was over. The heads of Philip's chief 
followers were cut off, though Captain Church, their captor, 
had promised to spare their lives; and Philip himself was 
beheaded and quartered by Church's order, since he was re- 
garded, curiously enough, as a rebel against Charles the Sec- 
ond, and this was the State punishment for treason. Another 
avowed reason was, that " as he had caused many an English- 
man's body to lye unburied," not one of his bones should be 
placed under ground. The head was set upon a pole in 
Plymouth, where it remained for more than twenty-four years. 
Yet when we remember that the heads of alleged traitors 
were exposed in London at Temple Bar for nearly a century 
longer — till 1772 at least — it is unjust to infer from this course 
any such fiendish cruelty as it would now imply. It is neces- 
sary to extend the same charity, however hard it may be, to 
the selling of Philip's wife and little son into slavery at the 
Bermudas ; and here, as has been seen, the clergy were con- 
sulted and the Old Testament called into requisition. 

While these events were passing in the Eastern settle- 
ments there were Indian outbreaks in Virginia, resulting in 
war among the white settlers themselves. The colony was, for 
various reasons, discontented ; it was greatly oppressed, and a 
series of Indian murders brought the troubles to a climax. 
The policy pursued against the Indians was severe, and yet 



THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. 



179 




DEATH OF KING PHILIP. 



there was no proper protection afforded by the government; 
war was declared against them in 1676, and then the forces 
sent out were suddenly disbanded by the governor, Berkeley. 



l80 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

At last there was a popular rebellion, which included almost 
all the civil and military officers of the colony, and the rebel- 
lious party put Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., a recently arrived but 
very popular planter, at their head. He marched with five 
hundred men against the Indians, but was proclaimed a trai- 
tor by the governor, whom Bacon proclaimed a traitor in re- 
turn. The war with the savages became by degrees quite sec- 
ondary to the internal contests among the English, in the 
course of which Bacon took and burned Jamestown, begin- 
ning, it is said, with his own house; but he died soon after, 
the insurrection was suppressed, and the Indians were finally 
quieted by a treaty. 

Into all the Indian wars after King Philip's death two 
nationalities besides the Indian and English entered in an im- 
portant way. These were the Dutch and the French. It was 
the Dutch who, soon after 1614, first sold fire-arms to the In- 
dians in defiance of their own laws, and by .this means greatly 
increased the horrors of the Indian warfare. On the other 
hand, the Dutch did to the English colonists, though uninten- 
tionally, a service so great that the whole issue of the pro- 
longed war may have turned upon it, because of the close 
friendship they established with the Five Nations, commonly 
called the Iroquois. These tribes, the Cayugas, Mohawks, 
Oneidas, Onondagas, and Senecas — afterwards joined by the 
Tuscaroras — held the key to the continent. Occupying the 
greater part of what is now the State of New York, they virt- 
ually ruled the country from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, 
and from the Great Lakes to the Savannah River. They were 
from the first treated with great consideration by the Dutch, 
and they remained, with brief intervals of war, their firm 
friends. One war, indeed, there was under the injudicious man- 
agement of Governor Kieft, lasting from 1640 to 1643; and 
this came near involving the English colonies, while it caused 
the death of sixteen hundred Indians, first or last, seven hun- 



THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. l8l 

dred of these being massacred under the borrowed Puritan 
leader Captain Underbill. But this made no permanent in- 
terruption to the alliance between the Iroquois and the Dutch. 

When the New Netherlands yielded to the English, the 
same alliance was retained, and to this we probably owe the 
preservation of the colonies, their union against England, and 
the very existence of the present American nation. Yet the 
first English governor, Colden, has left on record the com- 
plaint of an Indian chief, who said that they very soon felt 
the difference between the two alliances. " When the Dutch 
held this country," he said, "we lay in their houses, but the 
English have always made us lie out-of-doors." 

But if the Dutch were thus an important factor in the 
Indian wars, the French became almost the controlling influ- 
ence on the other side. Except for the strip of English col- 
onies along the sea-shore, the North American continent north 
of Mexico was French. This was not the result of accident 
or of the greater energy of that nation, but of a systematic 
policy, beginning with Champlain, and never abandoned by his 
successors. This plan was, as admirably stated by Parkman, 
"to influence Indian counsels, to hold the balance of power 
between adverse tribes, to envelop in the net-work of French 
power and diplomacy the remotest hordes of the wilderness." 
With this was combined a love of exploration, so great that 
it was hard to say which assisted the most in spreading their 
dominion — religion, the love of adventure, diplomatic skill, or 
military talent. These between them gave the interior of the 
continent to the French. One of the New York governors 
wrote home that if the French were to hold all that they had 
discovered, England would not have a hundred miles from the 
sea anywhere. 

France had early occupied Acadia, Canada, and the St. Law- 
rence on the north. Marquette rediscovered the Mississippi, 
and La Salle traced it, though Alvar Nufiez had crossed it, 



1 82 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

and De Soto had been buried beneath it. A Frenchman first 
crossed the Rocky Mountains ; the French settled the Missis- 
sippi Valley in 1699, and Mobile in 1702. The great West- 
ern valleys are still full of French names, and for every one 
left, two or three have been blotted out. The English maps, 
down to the year 1763, give the name "New France" not to 
Canada only, but to the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. New 
France was vast ; New England was a narrow strip along the 
shore. But there was a yet greater difference in the tenure 
by which the two nations held their nominal settlements. The 
French held theirs with the aid of a vast system of paid of^- 
cials, priests, generals, and governors ; the English colonists 
kept theirs for themselves, aided by a little chartered authority 
or deputed power. Moreover, the French retained theirs by 
a chain of forts and a net-work of trading posts ; the English 
held theirs by sober agriculture. In the end the spade and 
axe proved mightier than the sw^ord. What postponed the 
triumph w^as that the French, not the English, had won the 
hearts of the Indians. 

This subject has been considered in a previous chapter, 
and need be only briefly mentioned here ; but it should not 
be wholly passed by. To the Indian, the Frenchman was a 
daring swordsman, a gay cavalier, a dashing leader, and the 
most charming of companions ; the Englishman was a plod- 
ding and sordid agriculturist. " The stoic of the woods " saw 
men infinitely his superiors in all knowledge and in the refine- 
ments of life, who yet cheerfully accepted his way of living, 
and took with apparent relish to his whole way of existence. 
Charlevoix sums it all up admirably : " The savages did not 
become French : the Frenchmen became savages." To the 
savage, at least, the alliance was inestirhable. What saved the 
English colonies w^as the fact that it was not quite universal. 
It failed to reach the most advanced, the most powerful, and 
the most central race of savages — the tribes called Iroquois. It 



THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. 183 

took the French a great many years to outgrow the attitude of 
hostility to these tribes which began with the attack of Cham- 
plain and a few Frenchmen on an Iroquois fort. Baron La 
Hontan, one of the few Frenchmen who were not also eood 
Catholics, attributes this mainly to the influence of the priests. 
He says, in the preface to the English translation of his letters 
(1703): "Notwithstanding the veneration I have for the clergy, 
I impute to them all the mischief the Iroquese have done to 
the French colonies in the course of a war that would never 
have been undertaken if it had not been for the counsels of 
those pious churchmen." But whatever the cause, the fact was 
of vital importance, and proved to be, as has been already said, 
the turning-point of the whole controversy. 

These being the general features of the French and In- 
dian warfare, it remains only to consider briefly its successive 
stages. It took the form of a series of outbreaks, most of 
which were so far connected with public affairs in Europe 
that their very names often record the successive rulers under 
whose nominal authority they were waged. The first, known 
as " King William's War," and sometimes as " St. Castin's 
War," began in 1688, ten years after the close of King Philip's 
War, while France and England were still at peace. In April 
of the next year came the news that William of Orange had 
landed in England, and this change in the English dynasty 
was an important argument in the hands of the French, who 
insisted on regarding the colonists not as loyal Englishmen, 
but as rebels against their lawful king, James the Second. In 
reality the American collision had been in preparation for years. 
"About the year 1685," wrote the English visitor, Edward 
Randolph, " the French of Canada encroached upon the lands 
of the subjects of the crown of England, building forts upon 
the heads of their great rivers, and extending their bounds, 
disturbed the inhabitants." On the other hand, it must be re- 
membered that England claimed the present territory of New 



1 84 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and the provincial charter of 
Massachusetts covered those regions. Thus each nationahty 
seemed to the other to be trying to encroach, and each pro- 
fessed to be acting on the defensive. With this purpose the 
French directly encouraged Indian outbreaks. We now know, 
from the despatches of Denonville, the French Governor of 
Canada, that he claimed as his own merit the successes of 
the Indians ; and Champigny wrote that he himself had sup- 
plied them with gunpowder, and that the Indians of the Chris- 
tian villages near Quebec had taken the leading part. 

Unluckily several of the provinces had just been brought 
together under the governorship of a man greatly disliked and 
distrusted. Sir Edmund Andros. In August this official, then 
newly placed in power, visited the Five Nations at Albany to 
secure their friendliness. During his absence there were ru- 
mors of Indian outbreaks at the East, and though he took 
steps to suppress them, yet nobody trusted him. The friendly 
Indians declared that "the Governor was a rogue, and had 
hired the Indians to kill the English," and that the Mohawks 
were to seize Boston in the spring. This rumor helped the 
revolt of the people against Andros ; and after his overthrow 
the garrisons at the eastward were broken up, and the savage 
assaults recommenced. Cocheco, now Dover, New Hampshire, 
w^as destroyed ; Pemaquid, a fort with seven or eight cannon, 
was regularl)' besieged by a hundred Christian Indians under 
their priest, Pere Thury, who urged on the attack, but would 
not let the English be scalped or tortured. From the begin- 
ning the movements of the French and Indians were not im- 
pulsive outbreaks, as heretofore, but were directed by a trained 
soldier of fifty years' experience, the Count de Frontenac. 
There were no soldiers of experience among the colonists, and 
they fought like peasants against a regular army. Yet when, 
after a terrible Indian massacre at Schenectady, a Congress of 
delegates was held at New York, in May, 1690, they daringly 



THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. 1 85 

planned an attack on the two strongholds, Quebec and Mont- 
real. Winthrop of Connecticut was to take Montreal by a land 
expedition, and Sir William Phips, of Massachusetts — a rough 
sailor who had captured Port Royal — was sent by water with 
more than two thousand men against Quebec, an almost im- 
pregnable fortress manned by nearly three thousand. Both en- 
terprises failed, and the Baron La Hontan wrote of Phips — 
in the English edition of his letters — that he could not have 
served the French better had he stood still with his hands in 
his pockets. The colonies were impoverished by these hopeless 
efforts, and the Puritans attributed their failure to " the frown 
of God." The Indians made fresh attacks at Pentucket (Hav- 
erhill) and elsewhere; but the Peace of Ryswick (September 20, 
1697) stopped the war for a time, and provided that the Ameri- 
can boundaries of France and England should remain the same. 

A few more years brought new hostilities (May 4, 1702), 
when England declared war against France and Spain. This 
was called in Europe " The War of the Spanish Succession," 
but in America simply " Queen Anne's War." The Five 
Nations were now strictly neutral, so that New York was 
spared, and the force of the war fell on the New England 
settlements. The Eastern Indians promised equal neutrality, 
and one of their chiefs said, " The sun is not more distant 
from the earth than our thoughts from war." But they joined 
in the war just the same, and the Deerfield (Massachusetts) 
massacre, with the captivity of Rev. John Williams, roused the 
terror of all the colonists. Traces of that attack, in the form 
of tomahawk strokes upon doors, are still to be seen in Deer- 
field. The Governor of Massachusetts was distrusted ; he 
tried in vain to take the small fort of Port Royal in Nova 
Scotia — " the hornets' nest," as it was called ; but it was finally 
taken in 17 10, and its name was changed to Annapolis Royal, 
afterwards Annapolis, in honor of the Queen. 

The year after, a great expedition was sent from England 



l86 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

by St. John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke, to effect the con- 
quest of Canada. Fifteen ships of war, with five regiments of 
Marlborough's veterans, reached Boston in June, 1711. Pro- 
vincial troops went from New York and New Jersey, as well 
as New England, and there were eight hundred Iroquois war- 
riors. St. John wrote, " I believe you may depend upon our 
being, at this time, the masters of all North America." On 
the contrary, they did not become masters of an inch of 
ground ; the expedition utterly failed, mainly through the in- 
competency of the commander, Admiral Sir Hovenden Walk- 
er; eight ships were wrecked, eight hundred and eighty-four 
men were drowned, and fleet and land-forces retreated. In 
April, 1 71 3, the war nominally closed with the Peace of 
Utrecht, which gave to England Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, 
and Acadia — the last so poorly defined as to lead to much 
trouble at a later day. 

But in Maine the Indian disturbances still went on. New 
forts were built by the colonists, and there were new attacks 
by the Abenaki tribe. Among these the most conspicuous 
figure was for a quarter of a century the Jesuit priest Pere 
Rasle, who had collected a village of "praying Indians" at 
Norridgewock, and had trained a band of forty young men 
to assist, wearing cassock and surplice, in the services of the 

y £3u- ^M-o~ a^rr^ O'UJZ^ ^Z^ //^'^ p-a^tn^ 





f^ n^^^ f""^ 



FAC-SIMILE FROM MS. OF FATHER RASLE S ABENAKI GLOSSARY. 

Translation : " Having been for a year among the savages, I begin to arrange in 
order in the manner of a dictionary the words that I learn." 



THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. 187 

Church. There is in the Harvard College Library a MS. 
glossary of the Abenaki language in his handwriting. His 
whole career was one of picturesque self-devotion; but he 
belonged emphatically to the Church militant, and was in con- 
stant communication with the French Governor of Canada. 
His settlement was the head-quarters for all attacks upon the 
English colonists, and was finally broken up and annihilated 
by them on August 23, 1724. With him disappeared the Jes- 
uit missions in New England, though there were scattering 
hostilities some time longer. On December 15, 1725, the Abe- 
naki chiefs signed at Boston a treaty of peace, which is still 
preserved in the Massachusetts archives, and this compact was 
long maintained. 

Nineteen years of comparative peace now followed, — by far 
the longest interval during the Contest of a century. In 1744 
came another war between England and France, known in Eu- 
rope as " the War of the Austrian Succession," but in America 
as " King George's War," or as " Governor Shirley's War." Its 
chief event was that which was the great military surprise of 
that century, both at home and abroad — the capture of Louis- 
burg in 1745. Hawthorne, in one of his early papers, has 
given a most graphic picture of the whole occurrence. A fleet 
sailed from Boston under Sir William Pepperrell, who led three 
thousand men to attack a stronghold which had been called 
the Gibraltar of America, and whose fortifications had cost five 
million dollars. The walls were twenty or thirty feet high, and 
forty feet thick ; they were surrounded by a ditch eighty feet 
wide, and defended by two hundred and forty- three pieces of 
artillery, against which the assailants had eighteen cannon and 
three mortars. It seemed an enterprise as hopeless as that of 
Sir William Phips against Quebec, and yet it succeeded. To 
the amazement of all, the fortress surrendered after a siege of 
six weeks. The pious Puritans believed it a judgment of God 
upon the Roman Catholics, and held with delight a Protestant 



i88 



HISTORY OF THE U XI TED STATES. 



service in the chapel of the fort. When they returned they 
brought with them an iron cross from the chapel, and it now 




SIR WILLIAM PKPPKRRLLL. 
[From the painting in the Essex Institute.] 



stands above the main entrance to the Harvard College library. 
But three years after (1748) the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle pro- 
vided for the mutual restoration of all conc^uests, and . Louis- 
burg was given back to the French. 



THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. 189 

Every step in this prolonged war taught the colonists the 
need of uniting. All the New England colonies had been 
represented at Louisburg by men, and New York, New Jersey, 
and Pennsylvania by money. New hostilities taking place in 
Nova Scotia and along the Ohio, what is called the " Old 
French War," or " French and Indian War," began, and at its 
very outset a convention of delegates met in Albany, coming 
from New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. 
It was called by advice of the British ministry, and a commit- 
tee of one from each colony was appointed to consider a 
plan of union. No successful plan followed, and a sarcastic 
Mohawk chief said to the colonists : " You desired us to open 
our minds and hearts to you. Look at the French ; they are 
men ; they are fortifying everywhere. But, we are ashamed 
to say it, you are like women, without any fortifications. It 
is but one step from Canada hither, and the French may eas- 
ily come and turn you out-of-doors." 

For the eight years following it seemed more than likely 
that the description would be fulfilled. The French kept res- 
olutely at work, building forts and establishing garrisons, until 
they had a chain of sixty that reached from Quebec to New 
Orleans. Vainly did the Governor of Virginia send Washing- 
ton, then a youth of twenty -one, to remonstrate with the 
French officers in 1753; he traversed the unbroken forests 
and crossed freezing rivers on rafts of ice ; but to no result, 
except that it all contributed to the training of the future 
general. The English colonists achieved some easy successes 
— as in dispersing and removing the so-called " neutral French 
in Acadia" — a people whose neutrality, though guaranteed by 
treaty, did not prevent them from constantly recruiting the 
enemy's forces, and who were as inconvenient for neighbors as 
they are now picturesque in history. But when Braddock 
came with an army of English veterans to lead the colonial 
force he was ignominiously defeated, near Pittsburgh, Pennsyl- 



190 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



Shk 





vania (July 9, 1755), and Washington and the provincial troops 
had to cover his retreat. All along the line of the colonies 
the Indian attacks onl)^ grew more terrible, the French telling 

the natives that the 
time had now come to 
drive the Enolish from 
the soil. In Virgin- 
ia, Washington wrote 
that the " supplicating 
tears of women and 
thQ moving petitions 
of the men melted 
him with deadly sor- 
row." Farther north, 
the French General 
Montcalm took fort af- 
ter fort with apparent 
ease, allowino^ the grar- 
risons, as at Fort Will- 
iam Henry, to be mur- 
dered by his Indians. 
" For God's sake," 
wrote the officer in command at Albany, to the Governor of 
Massachusetts, " exert yourself to save a province ! New York 
itself may fall. Save a country ! Prevent the downfall of the 
British government !" Dr. Jeremy Belknap, whom Bryant de- 
clares to have been the first person who made American his- 
tory attractive, thus summed up the gloomy situation in the 
spring of 1757: "The great expense, the frequent disappoint- 
ments, the loss of men, of forts, of stores, was very discourag- 
ing. The enemy's country was filled with prisoners and scalps, 
private plunder and public stores, and provisions which our 
people, as beasts of burden, had conveyed to them. These 
reflections were the dismal accompaniment of the winter." 




LOUIS JOSEPH MONTCALM. 



THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. 



191 



What turned the scale was the energy of the new prime- 
minister, WilHam Pitt. Under his inspiration the colonies 
raised men "like magic," we are told; the home government 
furnishing arms, equip- 
ments, and supplies ; the 
colonies organizing, uni- 
forming, and paying the 
troops, with a prospect of 
reimbursement. Events 
followed in quick succes- 
sion. Abercrombie failed 
at Ticonderoga, but Brad- 



street took Fort Fronte- 
nac ; Prideaux took Ni- 
agara ; Louisburg, Crown 
Point, and even Ticon- 
derosfa itself fell. Oue- 
bee was taken in 1759, 
Wolfe, the victor, and 
Montcalm, the defeated, 
dying alike almost in the 
hour when the battle was 
decided. Montreal soon 

followed ; and in 1 763 the Peace of Paris surrendered Canada 
to the English, with nearly all the French possessions east 
of the Mississippi. France had already given up to Spain 
all her claims west of the Mississippi, and her brilliant career 
as an American power was over. With her the Indian tribes 
were also quelled, except that the brief conspiracy of Pontiac 
came and went like the last flicker of an expiring candle ; 
then the flame vanished, and the Hundred Years' War was at 
an end. 




JAMES WOLFE. 



VIII. 

THE SECOND GENERATION OF ENGLISHMEN IN 

AMERICA. 

WHEN a modern American makes a pilgrimage, as I have 
done, to the English village church at whose altars his 
ancestors once ministered, he brings away a feeling of renewed 
wonder at the depth of conviction which led the Puiitan- clergy 
to forsake their early homes. The exquisitely peaceful features 
of the English rural landscape — the old Norman church, half 
ruined, and in this particular case restored by aid of the Amer- 
ican descendants of that high-minded emigrant; the old burial- 
ground that surrounds it, a haunt of such peace as to make 
death seem doubly restful; the ancestral oaks; the rooks that 
soar above them ; the flocks of sheep drifting noiselessly among 
the ancient gravestones — all speak of such tranquillity as the 
eager American must cross the Atlantic to obtain. No Eng- 
lishman feels these things as the American feels them; the an- 
tiquity, as Hawthorne says, is our novelty. But beyond all the 
charm of the associations this thought always recurs — what 
love of their convictions, what devotion to their own faith, must 
have been needed to drive the educated Puritan clergymen from 
such delicious retreats to encounter the ocean, the forest, and 
the Indians ! 

Yet there was in the early emigration to every American 
colony quite another admixture than that of learning and re- 
finement ; a sturdy yeoman element, led by the desire to better 



SECOND GENERATION OF ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA. 193 

its condition and create a new religious world around it ; and 
an adventurous element, wishing for new excitements. The 
popular opinion of that period did not leave these considera- 
tions out of sight, as may be seen by this London street bal- 
lad of 1640, describing the emigration: 

" Our company we feare not, there goes my Cosen Hanna, 
And Ruben doe perswade to goe his sister faire Susanna, 
W'h Abigail and Lidia, and Ruth noe doubt comes after, 
And Sara kinde will not stay behinde my Cosen Constance dafter — 
Then for the truth's sake goe. 

"Nay Tom Tyler is p'pared, and ye Smith as black as a cole, 
And Ralph Cobbler too w''^ us will goe for he regards his soale. 
And the weaver honest Lyman, w'^^ Prudence Jacobs daughter, 
And Agatha and Barrbarra professeth to come after — 
Then for the truth's sake goe." 

There were also traces, in the emigration, of that love of 
wandering, of athletic sports and woodcraft, that still sends 
young men of English race to the far corners of the earth. 
In the Virginia colonization this element was large, but it also 
entered into the composition of the Northern colonies. The 
sister of Governor Winthrop wrote from England, in 1637, of 
her son, afterwards Sir George Downing, that the boy was 
anxious to go to New England ; and she spoke of the hazard 
that he was in " by reson of both his father's and his owne 
strange inclination to the plantation sports." Upham accord- 
ingly describes this same youth in Harvard College, where he 
graduated in 1642, as shooting birds in the wild woods of Sa- 
lem, and setting duck-decoys in the ponds. Life in the earlier 
days of the emigration was essentially a border life, a forest 
life, a frontier life — differing from such life in Australia or 
Colorado mainly in one wild dream which certainly added to 
its romance — the dream that Satan still ruled the forest, and 
that the Indians were his assents. 

Whatever else may be said of the Puritan emigration, it 

13 



194 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

represented socially and intellectually much of what was best 
in the mother country. Men whose life in England would have 
been that of the higher class of gentry might have been seen 
in New England taking with their own hands from the barrel 
their last measure of corn, and perhaps interrupted by the sight 
of a vessel arriving in the harbor with supplies. These men, 
who ploughed their own fields and shot their own venison, 
were men who had paced the halls of Emanuel College at 
Cambridge, who quoted Seneca in their journals of travel, and 
who brouQ-ht with them books of classic literature amono- their 
works of theology. The library bequeathed by the Rev. John 
Harvard to the infant college at Cambridge included Homer, 
Pliny, Sallust, Terence, Juvenal, and Horace. The library 
bought by the commissioners from the Rev. Mr. Welde, for the 
Rev. Mr. Eliot, had in it Plutarch's Morals and the plays of 
Aristophanes. In its early poverty the colony voted ^400 to 
found Harvard College, and that institution had for its second 
president a man so learned, after the fashion of those days, that 
he had the Hebrew Bible read to the students in the morning, 
and the Greek Testament in the afternoon, commenting on both 
extemporaneously in Latin. The curriculum of the institution 
was undoubtedly devised rather with a view to making learned 
theologians than elegant men of letters — thus much may be 
conceded to Mr. Matthew Arnold — but this was quite as much 
the case, as Mr. Mullinger has shown, in the English Cam- 
bridge of the seventeenth century. 

The year 1650 may be roughly taken as closing the first 
generation of the American colonists. Virginia had then been 
settled forty-three years. New York thirty-six, Plymouth thirty, 
Massachusetts Bay twenty-two, Maryland nineteen, Connecticut 
seventeen, Rhode Island fourteen, New Haven twelve, and Del- 
aware twelve. A variety of industries had already been intro- 
duced, especially in the New England colonies. Boat-building 
had there begun, according to Colonel C. D. Wright, in 1624; 



SECOND GENERATION OF ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA. 195 

brick-making, tanning, and windmills were introduced in 1629; 
shoemaking and saw-mills in 1635; cloth mills in 1638; printino- 
the year after; and iron foundries in 1644. In Virginia the 
colony had come near to extinction in 1624, and had revived 
under wholly new leadership. In New England, Brewster, Win- 
throp, Higginson, Skelton, Shepard, and Hooker had all died ; 
Bradford, Endicott, Standish, Winslow, Eliot, and Roofer WiU- 
iams were still living, but past their prime. Church and State 
were already beginning to be possessed by a younger race, who 
had either been born in America or been brought as young 
children to its shores. In this coming race, also, the traditions 
of learning prevailed ; the reading of Cotton Mather, for in- 
stance, was as marvellous as his powers of memory. When he 
entered Harvard College, at eleven, he had read Cicero, Ter- 
ence, Ovid, Virgil, and the Greek Testament ; wrote Latin with 
ease ; was reading Homer, and had begun the Hebrew gram- 
mar. But the influences around these men were stern and 
even gloomy, though tempered by scholarship, by the sweet 
charities of home, and by some semblance of relaxation. We can 
hardly say that there was nothing but sternness when we find 
the Rev. Peter Thacher at Barnstable, Massachusetts — a man 
of high standing in the churches — mitigating the care of souls, 
in 1679, by the erection of a private nine-pin alley on his own 
premises. Still there was for a time a distinct deepening of 
shadow around the lives of the Puritans, whether in the Nortlv 
ern or Southern colonies, after they were left wholly to them- 
selves upon the soil of the New World. The persecutions and 
the delusions belong generally to this later epoch. In the 
earlier colonial period there would have been no time for them, 
and hardly any inclination. In the later or provincial period 
society was undergoing a change, and wealth and aristocratic 
ways of living were being introduced. But it was in the inter- 
mediate time that religious rigor had its height. 

Modern men habitually exaggerate the difference between 



196 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

themselves and the Puritans. The points of difference are so 
great and so picturesque, we forget that the points of resem- 
blance, after all, outweigh them. We seem more remote from 




COTTON MATHpR. 



them than is really the case, because we dwell too much on 
secondary matters — a garment, a phrase, a form of service. 
Theologian and historian are alike overcome by this ; as soon 
as they touch the Puritans all is sombre, there is no sunshine, 



SECOND GENERATION OF ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA, 1 97 

no bird sings. Yet the birds filled the woods with their music 
then as now ; children played ; mothers talked pretty nonsense 
to their babies ; Governor Winthrop wrote tender messages to 
his third wife in a way that could only have come of long and 
reiterated practice. We cannot associate a gloomy tempera- 
ment with Miles Standish's doughty defiances, or with Francis 
Higginson's assertion that "a draught of New England air is 
better than a flagon of Old English ale." Their lives, like all 
lives, were tempered and moulded by much that was quite apart 
from theology — hard work in the woods, fights with the Indians, 
and less perilous field-sports. They were unlike modern men 
when they were at church, but not so unlike when they went on 
a bear-hunt. 

In order to understand the course of Puritan life in America, 
we must bear in mind that the first-comers in the most strictly 
Puritan colonies were more and not less liberal than their im- 
mediate descendants. The Plymouth colony was more tolerant 
than the later colony of Massachusetts Bay, and the first church 
of the Massachusetts Bay colony was freer than those which 
followed it. The covenant drawn up for this Salem church in 
1629 has seldom been surpassed in benignant comprehensive- 
ness ; it is thought that the following words constituted the 
whole of it : " We covenant with the Lord and one with anoth- 
er, and do bind ourselves, in the presence of God, to walk to- 
gether in all His ways, according Jte He is pleased to reveal 
Himself to us in His blessed word of truth." This was drawn 
'up, according to Mather, by the first minister of Salem; and 
even when this covenant was enlarged into a confession of faith 
by his son and successor, some years later, it nevertheless re- 
mained more liberal than many later covenants. The trouble 
was that the horizon for a time narrowed instead of widened. 
The isolation and privations of the colonial life produced their 
inevitable effect, and this tendency grew as the new generation 
developed. 



198 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

But it must be noticed that even this early Hberality never 
went so far as to lay down any high-sounding general principles 
of religious liberty, or to announce that as the corner-stone of 
the new enterprise. Here it is that great and constant injustice 
is done ; — in attributing to these Puritans a principle of toleration 
which they never set up, and then reproaching them with being 
false to it. Even Mr. Francis Parkman, who seems to me to be, 
within his own domain, unquestionably the first of American 
historians, loses his habit of justice when he quits his French- 
men and his Indians and deals with the Puritans. " At the out- 
set," he says, in his " Pioneers of France," "-New England was 
unfaithful to the principles of her existence. Seldom has relig- 
ious toleration assumed a form more oppressive than among 
the Puritan exiles. New England Protestantism appealed to 
liberty ; then closed the doors against her. On a stock of free- 
dom she grafted a scion of despotism." Surely this is the old 
misstatement often made, often refuted. When were those col- 
onists unfaithful to their own principle } When did they appeal 
to liberty.? They appealed to truth. It would have been far 
better and nobler had they aimed at both, but in this imperfect 
world we have often to praise and venerate men for a single 
virtue. Anything but the largest toleration would have been 
inconsistency in Roger Williams, or perhaps — for this is less 
clearly established — in Lord Baltimore; but in order to show 
that the Puritans were false to religious liberty it must be 
shown that they had proclaimed it. On the contrary, wdiat they 
sought to proclaim was religious truth. They lost the expan- 
sive influence of freedom, but they gained the propelling force 
of a high though gloomy faith. They lost the variety that 
exists in a liberal community where each man has his own 
opinion, but they gained the concentrated power of a homo- 
geneous and well-ordered people. 

There are but two of the early colonies of which the claim 
can be seriously made that they were founded on any principle 



SECOND GENERATION OF ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA. 199 

of religious freedom. These two are Rhode Island and Mary- 
land. It was said of the first by Roger Williams, its spiritual 
founder, that " a permission of the most paganish, Jewish, Turk- 
ish, or anti-Christian conscience " should be there granted " to 
all men of all nations and countries." Accordingly, the colony 
afforded such shelter on a very wide scale. It received Anne 
Hutchinson after she had set the State as well as Church in a 
turmoil at Boston, and had made popular elections turn on her 
opinions. It not only sheltered but gave birth to Jemima Wil- 
kinson, prophetess of the " Cumberland Zealots," who might, un- 
der the stimulus of a less tolerant community, have expanded 
into a Joanna Southcote or a Mother Ann Lee. It protected 
Samuel Gorton, a man of the Savonarola temperament, of whom 
his last surviving disciple said, in 1771, "My master wrote in 
heaven, and none can understand his writings but those who 
live in heaven while on earth." It cost such an effort to assimi- 
late these exciting ingredients that Roger Williams described 
Gorton, in 1640, as "bewitching and bemadding poor Provi- 
dence," and the Grand Jury of Portsmouth, R. I., was compelled 
to indict him as a nuisance in the same year, on this count, 
among others, " that Samuel Gorton contumeliously reproached 
the magistrates, calling them Just -asses." Nevertheless, all 
these, and such as these, were at last disarmed and made harm- 
less by the wise policy of Rhode Island, guided by Roger Will- 
iams, after he had outgrown the superfluous antagonisms of his 
youth, and had learned to be conciliatory in action as well as 
comprehensive in doctrine. Yet even he had so much to un- 
dergo in keeping the peace with all these heterogeneous materi- 
als that he recoiled at last from " such an infinite liberty of con- 
science," and declared that in the case of Quakers " a due and 
moderate restraint and punishment of these incivilities" was not 
only no persecution, but was " a duty and command of God." 

Maryland has shared with Rhode Island the honor of 
having established religious freedom, and this claim is largely 



200 HISTORY OF THE UN/TED STATES. 

based upon the noble decree passed by its General Assembly 
in 1649 : 

" No person whatsoever in this province professing to believe in Jesus 
Christ shall from henceforth be any way troubled or molested for his or her 
religion, or in the free exercise thereof, or any way compelled to the belief or 
exercise of any other religion against his or her consent." 

But it is never hard to evade a statute that seems to secure 
religious liberty, and this decree did not prevent the Maryland 
colony from afterwards enacting that if any person should deny 
the Holy Trinity he should first be bored through the tongue 
and fined or imprisoned ; that for the second offence he should 
be branded as a blasphemer, the letter " B " being stamped on 
'' his forehead ; and for the third offence should die. This was 
certainly a very limited toleration ; and granting that it has a 
-partial value, it remains an interesting question who secured it. 
Cardinal Manning and others have claimed this measure of tol- 
eration as due to the Roman Catholics, but Mr, E. D. Neill has 
conclusively shown that the Roman Catholic element was origi- 
nally much smaller than was supposed, that the " two hundred 
Catholic gentlemen " usually claimed as founding the colony 
were really some twenty gentlemen and three hundred laboring 
men ; that of the latter twelve died on shipboard, of whom only 
two confessed to the priests, thus giving a clew to the probable 
opinions of the rest ; and that of the Assembly which passed 
the resolutions the majority were Protestants, and even Puri- 
tans. But granting to Maryland a place next to Rhode Island 
in religious freedom, she paid, like that other colony, what was 
then the penalty of freedom, and I must dwell a moment on this. 

In those days religious liberty brought a heterogeneous and 
often reckless population ; it usually involved the absence of a 
highly educated ministry; and this implied the want of a set- 
tled system of education, and of an elevated standard of public 
duty. These deficiencies left both in Rhode Island and in 
Maryland certain results which are apparent to this day. There 



SECOND GENERATION OF ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA. 20I 

is nothing more extraordinary in the Massachusetts and Con- 
necticut colonies than the promptness with which they entered 
on the work of popular instruction. These little communities, 
just struggling for existence, marked out an educational system 
which had then hardly a parallel in the European world. In 
the Massachusetts Bay colony, Salem had a free school in 1640, 
Boston in 1642, or earlier, Cambridge about the same time, and 
the State, in 1647, marked out an elaborate system of common 
and grammar schools for every township — a system then with- 
out a precedent, so far as I know, in Europe. Thus ran the 
essential sentences of this noble document, held up to the ad- 
miration of all England by Lord Macaulay in Parliament: 

..." Y' learning may not be buried in ^ grave of o"" fath''^ in y^ church 
and comonwealth, the Lord assisting o'' endeavors — It is therefore ord''ed, y' 
ev'^y township in this iurisdiction, aff y*^ Lord heth increased y'" to y^ number 
of 50 household''^ shall then forthw''^ appoint one w^'^in their towne to teach all 
such children as shall resort to him to write and reade ; . . . and it is furth"" 
ordered, y' where any towne shall increase to y*^ numb"" of 100 families or 
househouk^, they shall set up a graiiier schoole, y^ m"" thereof being able to 
instruct youth so farr as they may be fited for yi^ university." 

The printing-press came with these schools, or before them, 
and was actively employed, and it is impossible not to recog- 
nize the contrast between such institutions and the spirit of 
that Governor of Virginia (Berkeley) who said, a quarter of a 
century later, " We have no free schools nor -printing, and I 
hope shall not have these hundred years." In Maryland, con- 
victs and indented servants were sometimes advertised for sale 
as teachers at an early day, and there was no public system 
until 1728. In Rhode Island, Newport had a public-school in 
1640, but it apparently lasted but a year or two, nor was there 
a general system till the year 1800. These contrasts are men- 
tioned for one sole purpose : to show that no single community 
unites all virtues, and that it was at that period very hard for 
religious liberality and a good school system to exist together. ^ 

There was a similar irregularity among the colonies in the 



202 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

number of university -trained men. Professor F. B. Dexter 
has shown that no less than sixty such men joined the Massa- 
chusetts Bay colony within ten years of its origin, while after 
seventeen years of separate existence the Virginia colony held 
but two university men, Rev. Hant Wyatt and Dr. Pott ; and 
Rhode Island had also but two in its early days, Roger Will- 
iams and the recluse William Blaxton. No one has more 
fully recognized the " heavy price paid " for this " great cup of 
liberty " in Rhode Island than her ablest scholar. Professor Di- 
man, who employs precisely these phrases to describe it in his 
Bristol address ; and who fearlessly points out how much that 
State lost, even while she gained something, by the absence of 
that rigorous sway and that lofty public standard which were 
associated with the stern rule of the Puritan clergy. 

In all the early colonies, unless we except Rhode Island, the 
Puritan spirit made itself distinctly felt, and religious persecu- 
tion widely prevailed. Even in Maryland, as has been shown, 
the laws imposed branding and boring through the tongue as 
a penalty for certain opinions. In Virginia those who refused 
to attend the Established Church must pay 200 pounds of to- 
bacco for the first offence, 500 for the second, and incur ban- 
ishment for the third. A fine of 5000 pounds of tobacco was 
placed upon unauthorized religious meetings. Quakers and 
Baptists were whipped or pilloried, and any ship-master convey- 
ing Nonconformists was fined. Even so late as 1741, after per- 
secution had virtually ceased in New England, severe laws were 
passed against Presbyterians in Virginia ; and the above-named 
laws of Maryland were re-enacted in 1723. At an earlier pe- 
riod, however, the New England laws, if not severer, were no 
doubt more rigorously executed. In some cases, to be sure, the 
so-called laws were a deliberate fabrication, as in the case of the 
Connecticut " Blue Laws," a code reprinted to this day in the 
newspapers, but which existed only in the active and malicious 
imagination of the Tory Dr. Peters. 



SECOND GENERATION OF ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA. 203 

The spirit of persecution was strongest in the New England 
colonies, and chiefly in Massachusetts, because of the greater 
intensity with which men there followed out their convictions. 
It was less manifest in the banishment of Roarer Williams — 
which was, after all, not so much a religious as a political trans- 
action — than in the Quaker persecutions which took place be- 
tween 1656 and 1660. Whatever minor elements may have 
entered into the matter, these were undoubtedly persecutions 
based on religious grounds, and are therefore to be utterly 
condemned. Yet they were not quite so bad as a class of per- 
secutions which had become familiar in Europe — forbidding 
heretics to leave the realm, and then tormenting them if they 
stayed. Not a Quaker ever suffered death except for voluntary 
action ; that is, for choosing to stay, or to return after banish- 
ment. To demand that men should consent to be banished 
on pain of death seems to us an outrage ; but it seemed quite 
otherwise, we must remember, to those who had already exiled 
themselves, in order to secure a spot where they could worship 
in their own way. Cotton Mather says, with some force : 

" It was also thought that the very Quakers themselves would say that if 
they had got into a Corner of the World, and with an immense Toyl and 
Charge made a Wilderness habitable, on purpose there to be undisturbed in 
the Exercises of their Worship, they would never bear to have New-Englanders 
come among them and interrupt their Publick Worship, endeavor to seduce 
their Children from it, yea, and repeat such Endeavors after mild Entreaties 
first, and then just Banishments, to oblige their departure." 

We now see that this place they occupied was not a mere 
corner of the world, and that it was- even then an essential 
part of the British dominions, and subject to British laws. We 
can therefore see that this was not the whole of the argument, 
and the Quakers might well maintain that they had a legal 
right to exercise their religion in America. The colonists 
seem to me to have strained much too far the power given 
them in their patent to " encounter, expulse, repel, and resist " 



204 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

all invaders when they applied it to these unwarlike visitors. 
Yet the Quakers were in a sense invaders, nevertheless ; their 
latest and ablest defender, Mr. R. C. Hallow^ll, concedes as 
much when he entitles his history " The Quaker Invasion of 
New England;" and if an invasion it was, then Cotton Mather's 
argiimentum ad homincm was quite to the point. Had the 
Quakers, like the Moravians, made settlements and cleared the 
forests for themselves, this argument would have been quite 
disarmed ; and had those settlements been interfered with by 
the Puritans, the injustice would have been far more glaring; 
nor is it probable that the Puritans would have molested such 
colonies — unless they happened to be too near. 

It must be remembered, too, that the Puritans did not view 
Quakers and other zealots as heretics merely, but as dangerous 
social outlaws. There was among the colonists a genuine and 
natural fear that if the tide of extravagant fanaticism once set 
in, it might culminate in such atrocities as had shocked all 
Europe while the Anabaptists, under John of Leyden, were in 
power at Miinster. In the frenzied and naked exhibitions of 
Lydia Wardwell and Deborah Wilson they saw tendencies 
which might end in uprooting all the social order for which 
they were striving, and might lead at last to the revocation 
of their charter. I differ with the greatest unwillingness from 
my old friend Mr. John G. Whittier in his explanation of a part 
of these excesses. He thinks that these naked performances 
came from persons who were maddened by seeing the partial 
exposure of Quakers whipped through the streets. This view, 
though plausible, seems to me to overlook the highly wrought 
condition of mind among these enthusiasts, and the fact that 
they regarded everything as a symbol. When one of the very 
ablest of the Quakers, Robert Barclay, walked the streets of 
Aberdeen in sackcloth and ashes, he deemed it right to sacri- 
fice all propriety for the sake of a symbolic act ; and in just 
the same spirit we find the Quaker writers of that period de- 



SECOND GENERATION OF ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA. 20$ 




A QUAKER EXHORTER IN NEW ENGLAND. 



fending these personal exposures, not by Mr. Whittier's rea- 
sons, but for symbolic ones. In Southey's " Commonplace- 
Book" there is a long extract, to precisely this effect, from the 
life of Thomas Story, an English Friend who had travelled in 



206 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

America. He seems to have been a moderate man, and to 
have condemned some of the extravagances of the Ranters, but 
gravely argues that the Quakers might really have been com- 
manded by God to exhibit their nakedness " as a sign." 

Whatever provocation the Friends may have given, their 
persecution is the darkest blot upon the history of the time — 
darker than witchcraft, which was a disease of supernatural 
terror. And like the belief in witchcraft, the spirit of persecu- 
tion could only be palliated by the general delusion of the age, 
by the cruelty of the English legislation against the Jesuits, 
which the Puritan Legislature closely fallowed as regarded 
Quakers ; and in general by the attempt to unite Church and 
State, and to take the Old Testament for a literal modern 
statute-book. It must be remembered that our horror at this 
intolerance is also stimulated from time to time by certain ex- 
travagant fabrications which still appear as genuine in the 
newspapers ; as that imaginary letter said to have been ad- 
dressed by Cotton Mather to a Salem clergyman in 1682, and 
proposing that a colony of Quakers be arrested and sold as 
slaves. This absurd forgery appeared first in some Pennsyl- 
vania newspaper, accompanied by the assertion that this letter 
was in possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. No 
such paper was ever known to that society ; Cotton Mather 
was, at the time alleged, but nineteen years old, and the Quaker 
persecution had substantially ceased twenty years before. But 
when did such contradictions ever have any effect on the 
vitality of a lie } 

The dark and intense convictions of Puritanism were seen 
at their highest in the witchcraft trials — events which took 
place in almost every colony at different times. The wonder 
is that they showed themselves so much less in America than 
in most European nations at the same period. To see this de- 
lusion in its most frightful form we must go beyond the Atlan- 
tic and far beyond the limits of English Puritanism. During 



SECOND GENERATION OF ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA. 2oy 

its course 30,000 victims were put to death in Great Britain, 
75,000 in France, 100,000 in Germany, besides those executed 
in Italy, Switzerland, and Sweden, many of them being burned. 
Compared with this vast estimate, which I take from that 
careful historian Mr. W. F. Poole, how trivial seem the few 
dozen cases to be found in our early colonies ; and yet, as he 
justly remarks, these few have attracted more attention from 
the world than all the rest. Howell, the letter- writer, says, 
under date of February 22, 1647: "Within the compass of two 
years near upon 300 witches were arraigned, and the larger 
part of them executed, in Essex and Suffolk [England] only. 
Scotland swarms with them more and more, and persons of 
good quality are executed daily." In a single Swedish village 
threescore and ten witches were discovered, most of whom, 
including fifteen children, were executed, besides thirty children 
who were compelled to "run the gantlet" and be lashed on 
their hands once a week for a year. The eminent English 
judge Sir Matthew Hale, giving his charge at the trial for 
witchcraft of Rose Cullender and Anne Duny in 1668 — a trial 
which had great weight with the American judges — said that 
he " made no doubt there were such Creatures as Witches, for 
the Scriptures affirmed it, and the Wisdom of all Nations had 
provided Laws against such Persons." The devout Bishop 
Hall wrote in England : " Satan's prevalency in this Age is 
most clear, in the marvellous numbers of Witches abiding in 
all places. Now hundreds are discovered in one Shire." It 
shows that there was, on the whole, a healthy influence exerted 
on Puritanism by American life when we consider that the 
witchcraft excitement was here so limited and so short-lived. 

The first recorded case of execution for this offence in the 
colonies is mentioned in Winthrop's journal (March, 1646-47), 
as occurring at Hartford, Connecticut, where another occurred 
in 1648, there being also one in Boston that same year. Nine 
more took place in Boston and in Connecticut before the great 



2o8 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




outbreak at Salem, A curious one appears in the Maryland 
records of 1654 as having happened on the high seas upon a 
vessel bound to Baltimore, where a woman was hanged by the 
seamen upon this charge, the case being afterwards investigated 
by the Governor and Council. A woman was tried and ac- 
quitted in Pennsylvania in 
1683; one was hanged in 
Maryland for this alleged 
crime by due sentence of 
court in 1685; and one or 
two cas^s occurred at New 
York. The excitement 
finally came to a head in 
1692 at Salem, Massachu- 
setts, where nineteen per- 
sons were hanged, and one 
" pressed to death " for re- 
fusing to testify — this be- 
ing the regularly ordained 
punishment for such re- 
fusal. The excitement be- 
ing thus relieved, a reac- 
tion followed. Brave old Samuel Sewall won for himself honor 
in all coming time by rising in his place in the congregation, 
and causing to be read an expression of regret for the part he 
had taken in the trials. The reaction did not at once reach 
the Southern colonies. Grace Sherwood was legally ducked 
for witchcraft in Virginia in 1705, and there was an indict- 
ment, followed by acquittal, in Maryland as late as 171 2. 

That the delusion reached this point was due to no hard- 
ened inhumanity of feeling ; on the contrary, those who partici- 
pated in it prayed to be delivered from any such emotion. " If 
a drop of innocent blood should be shed in the prosecution of 
the witchcrafts among us, how unhappy are we !" wrote Cotton 




SAMUEL SEWALL. 

[From the collections of the Massachusetts Historical 
Society.] 



SECOND GENERATION OF ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA. 209 




ARRESTING A WITCH. 



Mather. Accordingly Mr. Poole has shown that this eminent 
clergyman, popularly identified beyond any one else with the 
witchcraft delusion, yet tried to have it met by united prayer 
rather than by the courts ; would never attend any of the witch- 
craft trials ; cautioned the magistrates against credulity, and 

14 



2IO HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

kept secret to his dying day the names of many persons pri- 
vately inculpated by the witnesses with whom he conversed. 
It was with anguish of spirit and the conscientious fidelity of 
the Anglo-Saxon temperament that these men entered upon the 
work. Happy would they have been could they have taken 
such supposed visitations lightly, as the Frenchmen on this 
continent have taken them. Champlain fully believed, as has 
been already stated, that there was a devil under the name of 
the Gougou inhabiting a certain island in the St. Lawrence ; 
but he merely crossed himself, carolled a French song, and 
sailed by. Yet even in France, as has been seen, the delusion 
raged enormously ; and to men of English descent, at any rate, 
it was no such light thing that Satan dwelt visibly in the midst 
of them. Was this to be the end of all their labors, their sac- 
rifices } They had crossed the ocean, fought off the Indians, 
cleared the forest, built their quaint little houses in the clear- 
ing, extirpated all open vice, and lo ! Satan was still there in 
concealment, like the fabled ghost which migrated with the 
family, being packed among the beds. There is no mistaking 
the intensity of their lament. See with what depth of emotion 
Cotton Mather utters it : 

" 'Tis a dark time, yea a black night indeed, now the Ty-dogs of the Pit are 
abroad among us, but it is through the wrath of the Lord of Hosts / . . . Blessed 
Lord! Are all the other Instruments of thy Vengeance too good for the chas- 
tisement of such Transgressors as we are ? Must the very Devils be sent out 
of their own plase to be our troublers ? . . . They are not swarthy Indians, but 
they are sooty Devils that are let loose upon us." 

Thus wrote Cotton Mather, he who had- sat at the bedside 
of the " bewitched " Margaret Rule and had distinctly smelled 
sulphur. 

While the English of the second generation were thus pass- 
ing through a phase of Puritanism more intense than any they 
brought with them, the colonies were steadily increasing in 
population, and were modifying in structure towards their later 



SECOND GENERATION OF ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA. 211 

shape. Delaware had passed from Swedish under Dutch con- 
trol, Governor Stuyvesant having taken possession of the col- 
ony in 1655 with small resistance. Then the whole Dutch 
territory, thus enlarged, was transferred to English dominion, 
quite against the will of the same headstrong governor, known 
as " Hardkoppig Piet." The Dutch had thriven, in spite of 
their patroons, and their slaves, and their semblance of aristo- 
cratic government ; they had built forts in Connecticut, claimed 
Cape Cod for a boundary, and even stretched their demands as 
far as Maine. All their claims and possessions were at last 
surrendered without striking a blow. When the British fleet 
appeared off Long Island, the whole organized Dutch force in- 
cluded only some two hundred men fit for duty, scattered from 
Albany to Delaware ; the inhabitants of New Amsterdam re- 
fused to take up arms, although Governor Stuyvesant would 
fain have had them, and he was so enraged that he tore to 
pieces the letter from Nicolls, the English commander, to avoid 
showing it. " The surrender," he said, " would be reproved in 
the fatherland." But the people utterly refused to stand by 
him, and he was thus compelled, sorely against his will, to sur- 
render. The English entered into complete occupation ; New 
Netherlands became New York ; all the Dutch local names 
were abolished, although destined to be restored during the 
later Dutch occupation, wdiich again ceased in 1674. Yet the 
impress of that nationality remains to this day on the names, 
the architecture, and the customs of that region, and has indeed 
tinged those of the whole country ; and the Dutch had securely 
founded what was from its early clays the most cosmopolitan 
city of America. 

Their fall left the English in absolute possession of a line 
of colonies that stretched from Maine southward. This now 
included some new settlements made during the period just 
described. Carolina, as it had been called a hundred years be- 
fore by Jean Ribaut and his French Protestants, was granted, 



212 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




}bT=r 



PETER STUYVESANT TEARING THE LETTER DEMANDING THE SURRENDER OF 

NEW YORK. 



in 1663, by King Charles the Second to eight proprietors, who 
brought with them a plan of government framed for them by 
the celebrated John Locke — probably the most absurd scheme 
of government ever proposed for a new colony by a philoso- 
pher, and fortunately set aside from the very beginning by the 



SECOND GENERATION OF ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA. 213 

common-sense of the colonists. Being the most southern col- 
ony, Carolina was drawn into vexatious wars with the Span- 
iards, the French, and the Indians; but it was many years 
before it was divided by the King into two parts, and before 
Georgia was settled. Another grant by Charles the Second 
was more wisely planned, when in 16S1 William Penn sent out 
some emigrants, guided by no philosopher except Penn him- 
self, who came the following year. A great tract of country 
was granted to him as a sort of equivalent for a debt owed by 
the King to his father, Admiral Penn ; the annual rent was to 
be two beaver-skins. Everything seemed to throw around the 
coming of William Penn the aspect of a lofty enterprise : his 
ship was named ''The Welcome ;' his new city was to be called 
" Brotherly Love," or " Philadelphia." His harmonious rela- 
tions with the Indians have been the wonder of later times, 
though it must be remembered that he had to do with no such 
fierce tribes as had devastated the other colonies. Peace pre- 
vailed with sectarian zealots, and even towards those charged 
with witchcraft. Yet even Philadelphia did not escape the evil 
habits of the age, and established the whipping-post, the pillory, 
and the stocks — some of which Delaware, long a part of Penn- 
sylvania, still retains. But there is no such scene of content- 
ment in our pioneer history as that which the early annals of 
" Penn's Woods " (Pennsylvania) record. 

Other great changes were meanwhile taking place. New 
Hampshire and New Jersey came to be recognized as colonies 
by themselves ; the union of the New England colonies was dis- 
solved ; Plymouth was merged in Massachusetts, New Haven in 
Connecticut, Delaware temporarily in Pennsylvania. At the 
close of the period which I have called the second generation 
(1700) there were ten distinct English colonies along the coast 
— New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, 
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Caro- 
lina. 



214 HISTORY OF THE UXITED STATES. 

It is a matter of profound interest to observe that whatever 
may be the variations among these early settlements, we find 
everywhere the distinct traces of the old English village com- 
munities, which again are traced by Freeman and others to a 
Swiss or German orioin. The founders of the first New Eno^- 
land towns did not simply settle themselves upon the principle 
of "squatter sovereignty," each for himself; but they founded 
municipal organizations, based on a common control of the land. 
So systematically was this carried out that in an old town like 
Cambridge, Massachusetts, for instance, it would be easy at this 
day, were all the early tax lists missing, to determine the compar- 
ative worldly condition of the different settlers simply by com- 
paring the proportion which each had to maintain of the great 
" pallysadoe," or paling, which surrounded the little settlement. 
These amounts varied from seventy rods, in case of the richest, 
to two rods, in case of the poorest ; and so well was the work 
done that the traces of the " fosse " about the paling still remain 
in the willow-trees on the play-ground of the Harvard students. 
These early settlers simply reproduced, with a few necessary 
modifications, those local institutions which had come to them 
from remote ancestors. The town paling, the town meeting, 
the town common, the town pound, the fence-viewers, the field- 
drivers, the militia muster, even the tipstaves of the constables, 
are " survivals " of institutions older than the Norman conquest 
of England. Even the most matter-of-fact transactions of their 
daily life, as the transfer of land by giving a piece of turf, an 
instance of which occurred at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1696, 
sometimes carry us back to usages absolutely mediaeval — in this 
case to the transfer "by turf and twig" so familiar to historians, 
although it is unsafe to press these analogies too far, since the 
aboriginal tribes sometimes practised the same usage. All that 
the New EnQ:land settlers added to their traditional institutions 
— and it was a great addition — was the system of common 
schools. Beyond New England the analogies with inherited 



SECOND GENERATION OF ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA. 215 

custom are less clear and unmistakable ; but it is now main- 
tained that the Southern " parish " and " county," the South 
Carolina "court-greens" and "common pastures," as well as the 
Maryland " manors " and " court-leets," all represent, under dif- 
ferent combinations, the same inherited principle of communal 
sovereignty. 

The period which I have assigned to the second generation 
in America may be considered to have lasted from 1650 to 
1700. Even during this period there took place collisions of 
purpose and interest between the home government and the 
colonies. The contest for the charters, for instance, and the 
short-lived power of Sir Edmund Andros, occurred within the 
time which has here been treated, but they were the forerunners 
of a later contest, and will be included in another chapter. It 
will then be necessary to describe the gradual transformation 
which made colonies into provinces, and out of a varied emigra- 
tion developed a homogeneous people ; which taught the Eng- 
lish ministry to distrust the Americans, while it unconsciously 
weaned the Americans from England ; so that the tie which at 
first had expressed only affection, became at last a hated yoke, 
soon to be thrown aside forever. 



Q 



IX. 

THE BRITISH YOKE. 

HOW deep and tender was the love with which the first 
American colonists looked back to Jtheir early home! 
Many proofs of this might be cited from their writings, but I 
know of none quite so eloquent as that burst of impassioned 
feeling in a sermon by William Hooke — cousin and afterwards 
chaplain of Oliver Cromwell — who came to America about 1636, 
and preached this discourse at Taunton, July 3, 1640, under the 
title, " New England's Teares for Old England's Feares." This 
whole production is marked by a learning and eloquence that 
remind us of one who may have been Hooke's fellow-student at 
Oxford, Jeremy Taylor ; indeed it contains a description of a 
battle which, if Taylor had written it, would have been quoted 
in every history of English literature until this day. And in 
this sermon the clergyman thus speaks of the mother-country : 

" There is no Land that chiimes our name but England ; wee are distin- 
guished from all the Nations in the World by the name of English. There is 
no Potentate breathing that wee call our dread Sovereigne but King Charles., 
nor Lawes of any Land have civilized us but England's ; there is no Nation 
that calls us Countrey-men but the English. Brethren ! Did wee not there 
draw in our first breath ? Did not the Sunne first shine there upon our heads ? 
Did not that Land first beare us, even that pleasant Island, but for sinne, I 
would say, that Garden of the Lord, that Paradise ?" 

What changed all this deep tenderness into the spirit that 
found the British yoke detestable, and at length cast it off } 

There have been many other great changes in America 
since that day. The American fields have been altered by the 



THE BRITISH YOKE. 21 7 

steady advance of imported weeds and flowers ; the buttercup, 
the dandelion, and the ox-eyed daisy displacing the anemone 
and violet. The American physique is changed to a slenderer 
and more finely organized type; the American temperament 
has grown more sensitive, more pliant, more adaptive ; the 
American voice has been shifted to a higher key, perhaps yield- 
ing greater music when fidy trained. Of all these changes we 
see the result, but cannot trace the steps ; and it is almost as 
difficult to trace the successive impulses by which the love of 
everything that was English was transformed into a hatred of 
the British yoke. 

Yet its beginnings may be observed in much that the colo- 
nists did, and in some things which they omitted. Within ten 
years after Hooke's loving reference to King Charles there was 
something ominous in the cool self-control with which the peo- 
ple of Massachusetts refrained from either approving or disap- 
proving his execution. It was equally ominous when they ab- 
stained from recognizing the accession of Richard Cromwell, 
and when they let fifteen months pass before sending a congrat- 
ulatory address to Charles the Second. It was the beginning 
of a policy of indifference more significant than any policy of 
resistance. When in 1660, under that monarch, the Act of 
Navigation was passed, prescribing that no merchandise should 
be imported into the plantations but in English vessels navi- 
gated by Englishmen, the New England colonies simply ignored 
it. During sixteen years the Massachusetts governor, annually 
elected by the people, never once took the oath which the Nav- 
igation Act required of him ; and when the courageous Lever- 
ett was called to account for this he answered, " The King can 
in reason do no less than let us enjoy our liberties and trade, 
for we have made this large plantation of our own charge, with- 
out any contribution from the crown." Four years after the 
Act of Navigation, in 1664, the English fleet brought royal com- 
missioners to Boston, with instructions aiming at further aggres- 



2l8 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

sion ; and there was great dignity in the response of the General 
Court, made through Governor Endicott, October 30, 1664: 
" The all-knowing God he knowes our greatest ambition is to 
Hue a poore and quiet life in a corner of the world, without 
offence to God or man. Wee came not into this wilderness to 
seeke great things to ourselves, and if any come after vs to seeke 
them heere, they will be disappointed." They then declare that 
to yield to the demands of the commissioners would be simply 
to destroy their own liberties, expressly guaranteed to them by 
their King, and dearer than their lives. 

The commissioners visited other colonies and then returned 
to Boston, where they announced that they should hold a court 
at the house of Captain Thomas Breedon on Hanover Street, 
at 9 A.M., May 24, 1665. It happened that a brother officer of 
Captain Breedon, one Colonel Cartwright, who had come over 
with the commissioners, was then lying ill with the gout at this 
same house. At eight in the morning a messenger of the Gen- 
eral Court appeared beneath the window, blew an alarum on 
the trumpet, and proclaimed that the General Court protested 
against any such meeting. He then departed to make similar 
proclamation in other parts of the town ; and when the royal 
commissioners came together they found nobody with whom to 
confer but the gouty and irate Colonel Cartwright, enraged at 
the disturbance of his morning slumbers. So perished all hope 
of coercing the Massachusetts colony at that time. 

Thus early did the British yoke begin to make itself felt as 
a grievance. The Massachusetts men discreetly allayed the 
effect of their protest by sending his Majesty a ship -load of 
masts, the freight on which cost the colony ^1600. For ten 
years the quarrel subsided : England had trouble enough with 
her neighbors without meddling with the colonies. Then the 
contest revived, and while the colonies were in the death-strug- 
gle of Philip's war, Edward Randolph came as commissioner 
with a king's letter in 1675. Two years later the Massachusetts 



THE BRITISH YOKE. 



219 



colonists made for the first time the distinct assertion to the 
King, while pledging their loyalty, that " the laws of England 
were bounded within the four seas, and did not reach America," 
giving as a reason for this, " they [the colonists] not being rep- 
resented in Parliament." Then followed the long contest for 
the charter, while Edward Randolph, like a sort of Mephistoph- 
eles, was constantly coming and going between America and 
England with fresh complaints and new orders, crossing the 
Atlantic- eight times in nine years, and having always, by his 
own statement, "pressed* the necessity of a general Governor 
as absolutely necessary for the honor and service of the crown." 
All this long series of contests has been minutely narrated by 
Mr. Charles Deane, with a thoroughness and clearness which 
would have won him a world-wide reputation had they only 
been brought to bear upon the history of some little European 
State. Again and again, in different forms, the attempt was 
made to take away the charters of the colonies ; and the opposi- 
tion was usually led, at least in New England, by the clergy. 
Increase Mather, in 1683-84, addressed a town-meeting in opposi- 
tion to one such demand, and openly counselled that they should 
return Naboth's answer when Ahab asked for his vineyard, that 
they would not give up the inheritance of their fathers. 

It must be remembered that all the early charters were de- 
fective in this, that they did not clearly define where the line 
was to be drawn between the rights of the local government 
and of the crown. We can see now that such definition would 
have been impossible ; even the promise given to Lord Balti- 
more that Maryland should have absolute self-government did 
not avert all trouble. It is also to be remembered that there 
were great legal difficulties in annulling a charter, so long as 
the instrument itself had not been reclaimed by the power that 
issued it. We read with surprise of a royal scheme thwarted 
by so simple a process as the hiding of the Connecticut charter 
in a hollow tree by William Wadsworth ; but an almost vital 



220 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

importance was attached in those days to the actual possession 
of the instrument. It was considered the most momentous of 
all the Lord Chancellor's duties — indeed, that from which he 
had his name {cancellaritis) — to literally cancel and obliterate 
the King's letters-patent under the great seal. Hence, although 
the old charter of Massachusetts was vacated October 23, 1684, 
it has always been doubted by lawyers whether this was ever 
legally done, inasmuch as the old charter never was cancelled, 
and hangs intact in the office of the Massachusetts Secretary 
of State to this day. In 1686 came the new governor for the 
colonies — not the dreaded Colonel Kirke, who had been fully 
expected, but the less formidable Sir Edmund Andros. 

The first foretaste of the provincial life, as distinct from the 
merely colonial, was in the short-lived career of this ruler. He 
came, a brilliant courtier, among the plain Americans ; his ser- 
vants wore gay liveries ; Lady Andros had the first coach seen 
in Boston. He was at different times Governor of New York, 
President of New England, and Governor of Virginia. Every- 
where he was received with aversion, but everywhere this was 
tempered by the feeling that it might have been worse, for it 
might have been Kirke. Yet there was exceeding frankness in 
the way the colonists met their would-be tyrant. When he vis- 
ited Hartford, Connecticut, for instance, he met Dr. Hooker one 
morning, and said, " I suppose all the good people of Connecti- 
cut are fasting and praying on my account." The doctor re- 
plied, " Yes ; we read, ' This kind goeth not out but by fasting 
and prayer.' " And it required not merely these methods, but 
something more, to eject Sir Edmund at last from the colonies. 

The three years' sway of Sir Edmund Andros accustomed 
the minds of the American colonists to a new relation between 
themselves and England. Even where the old relation was not 
changed in form it was changed in feeling. The colonies which 
had seemed most secure in their self-government were liable at 
any moment to become mere royal provinces. Indeed, they 



THE BRITISH YOKE. 



221 




GOVERNOR ANDROS AND THE BOSTON PEOPLE. 



were officially informed that his Majesty had decided to unite 
under one government " all the English territories in America, 
from Delaware Bay to Nova Scotia," though this was not really 
attempted. Yet charters were taken away almost at random, 
colonies were divided or united without the consent of their in- 



222 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

habitants, and the violation of the right of local government was 
everywhere felt. But in various ways, directly or indirectly, the 
purposes of Andros were thwarted. When the English revolu- 
tion of 1 688 came, his power fell without a blow, and he found 
himself in the hands of the rebellious men of Boston. The day 
had passed by when English events could be merely ignored, 
and so every colony proclaimed with joy the accession of Will- 
iam and Mary. Such men as Jacob Leisler, in New York, 
Robert Treat, in Connecticut, and the venerable Simon Brad- 
street — then eighty-seven years old — in Massachusetts, were at 
once recognized as the leaders of the people.^ There was some 
temporary disorder, joined with high hope, but the colonies 
never really regained what they had lost, and henceforth held, 
more or less distinctly, the character of provinces, until they 
took their destiny, long after, into their own hands. It needed 
almost a century to prepare them for that event, not only by 
their increasing sense of grievance, but by learning to stretch 
out their hands to one another. 

With the fall of the colonial charters fell the New^ England 
confederacy that had existed from 1643. There were other 
plans of union : William Penn formed a very elaborate one in 
1698; others labored afterwards in pamphlets to modify his plan 
or to suggest their own. On nine different occasions, betw^een 
1684 and 1 75 1, three or more colonies met in council, repre- 
sented by their governors or by their commissioners, to consult 
on internal affairs, usually with reference to the Indians ; but 
they apparently never had a thought of disloyalty, and certainly 
never proclaimed independence ; nor did their meetings for a 
long time suggest any alarm in the minds of the British minis- 
try. The new jealousies that arose related rather to commercial 
restrictions than to the form of Q-overnment. 

It is necessary to remember that even in colonial days, while 
it was of the greatest importance that the British law-makers 
should know all about the colonies, there was on their part even 



THE BRITISH YOKE. 



223 



a denser ignorance as to American affairs than that which now 
impresses the travelling American in England. When he is 
asked if he came from America by land, it is only a matter for 
amusement ; but when, as James Otis tells us — writing in 1 764 
— it was not uncommon for official papers to come from an 
English Secretary of State addressed to " the Governor of the 
island of New England," it 
was a more serious matter. 
Under such circumstances 
the home government was 
liable at any minute to be -^^^ ihr 

swept away from all just -^ 

policy by some angry tale 
told by Randolph or An- 
dros. The prevalent Brit- 
ish feeling towards the col- 
onies was one of indiffer- 
ence, broken only by out- 
bursts of anger, and spasms 
of commercial selfishness. 

The event which startled 
the British ministry from 
this indifference was the 

taking of Louisburg in 1745, as described in a previous chap- 
ter. This success may have been, as has been asserted, only 
a lucky accident; no matter, it startled not only America, but 
Europe. That a fortress deemed impregnable by French en- 
gineers, and amply garrisoned by French soldiers, should have 
been captured by a mob of farmers and fishermen — this gave 
subject for reflection. " Every one knows the importance of 
Louisburg," wrote James Otis, proudly, "in the consultations of 
Aix-la-Chapelle." Voltaire, in wTiting the history of Louis the 
Fifteenth, heads the chapter of the calamities of France with 
this event. He declares that the mere undertaking of such an 




JAMES OTIS. 
[From a painting by I. Blackburn, 1753.] 



224 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

enterprise showed of what a community was capable when it 
united the spirit of trade and of war. The siege of Louisburg, 
he says, was not due to the cabinet at London, but solely to the 
daring of the New England traders {'' ce fiit le fruit de la har- 
diesse des fuarchands de la Nouvelle Angletcri'-e'"). But while the 
feeling inspired on the European continent was one of respect, 
that created in England was mingled with dread. Was, then, 
the child learning to do without the parent } And certainly the 
effect on the minds of the Americans looked like anything but 
the development of humility. Already the colonies, from Mas- 
sachusetts to Virginia, were eagerly planning the conquest of 
Canada, they to furnish the whole land-force, and Great Britain 
the fleet — a project which failed through the fears of the British 
ministry. The Duke of Bedford, then at the head of the naval 
service, frankly objected to it because of " the independence it 
might create in these provinces, when they shall see within 
themselves so great an army possessed by so great a country 
by right of conquest." And the Swedish traveller, Peter Kalm, 
writing three years later from New York, put the whole matter 
yet more clearly, thus : " There is reason for doubting whether 
the King, if he had the power, would wish to drive the French 
from their possessions in Canada. . . . The English government 
has therefore reason to regard the French in North America as 
the chief power that urges their colonies to submission." Any 
such impressions were naturally confirmed when, in 1 748, the 
indignant American colonists saw Louisburg go back to the 
French under the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. 

The trouble was that the British government wished the col- 
onies to unite sufificiently to check the French designs, but not 
enough to assert their own power. Thus the ministry positive- 
' ly encouraged the convention of delegates from the New Eng- 
land colonies and from New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, 
which met at Albany on June 19, 1754. It was in this conven- 
tion that Franklin began a course of national influence which 



THE BRITISH YOKE. 



225 



was long continued, and brought forward his famous representa- 
tion of the snake dismembered, with the motto " Unite or Die." 
He showed also his great organizing power by carrying throuo-h 
the convention a plan for a council of forty-eight members dis- 
tributed among the different colonies, and having for its head a 
royal presiding officer with veto power. All the delegates, ex- 
cept those from Connecticut, sustained the plan ; it was only 
when it went to the several colonies and the British ministry 
that it failed. Its ill-success in these two directions came from 
diametrically opposite reasons; the colonies thought that it gave 
them too little power, and the King's Council found in it just 
the reverse fault. It failed, but its failure left on the public 
mind an increased sense of divergence between England and 
America. Merely to have conceived such a plan was a great 
step towards the American Union that came afterwards; but 
still there was no conscious shrinking from the British yoke. 

The ten colonies which had a separate existence in 1700 
had half a century later grown to thirteen. Delaware, after 
having been merged in Pennsylvania, was again separated from 
it in 1703; North and South Carolina were permanently di- 
vided in 1729; Georgia was settled in 1733. No colony had 
a nobler foundation ; it was planned by its founder — a British 
general and a member of Parliament — expressly as a refuge for 
poor debtors and other unfortunates ; the colony was named 
Georgia in honor of the King, but it was given to the proprie- 
tors " in trust for the poor," and its seal had a family of silk- 
worms, with the motto " Not for yourselves " {Sic vos non vobis). 
Oglethorpe always kept friendship with the Indians ; he refused 
to admit either slavery or ardent spirits into the colony. But 
liis successors did not adhere to his principles, and the col- 
ony was small and weak up to the time of the coming sep- 
aration from England. Yet the growth of the colonies as a 
whole was strong and steady. Bancroft estimates their num- 
bers in 1754 at 1,185,000 whites and 260,500 colored, making 

15 



226 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




GENERAL OGLETHORPE, FOUNDER OF 
GEORGIA. 



in all nearly a million and 
a half. Counting the whites 
only, Massachusetts took the 
lead in population ; counting 
both races, Virginia. " Some 
few towns excepted," wrote 
Dickinson soon after, " we 
are all tillers of the earth, 
from Nova Scotia to West 
Florida. We are a people 
of cultivators, scattered over 
an immense territory, com- 
municating with each other 
by means of good roads and 
navigable rivers, united by 
the silken bands of mild government, all respecting the laws 
without dreading their power, because they are equitable." 

But if the colonies had all been composed of peaceful agri- 
culturists, the British yoke would have been easy. It was on 
the commercial settlements that the exactions of the home gov- 
ernment bore most severely, and hence it was that the East- 
ern colonies, which had suffered most in the Indian wars, were 
again to endure most oppression. An English political econ- 
omist of 1690, in a tract included in the " Harleian Miscellany," 
pointed out that there were two classes of colonies in America ; 
that England need have no jealousy of those which raised only 
sugar and tobacco, and thus gave her a market; but she must 
keep anxious watch on those which competed with England in 
fishing and trade, and "threatened in time a total independence 
therefrom." " When America shall be so well peopled, civil- 
ized, and divided into kingdoms," wrote Sir Thomas Browne 
about the same time, " they are like to have so little regard of 
their originals as to acknowledge no subjection unto them." 
All the long series of arbitrary measures which followed were 



THE BRITISH YOKE. 227 

but the effort of the British sfovernment to avert this dano-er 
The conquest of Canada, by making the colonies more impor- 
tant, only disposed the ministry to enforce obnoxious laws that 
had hitherto been dead letters. 

Such laws were the " Navigation Act," and the " Sugar Act," 
and what were known generally as the " Acts of Trade," all 
aimed at the merchants of New England and New York. Out 
of this grew the " Writs of Assistance," which gave authority 
to search any house for merchandise liable to duty, and which 
were resisted in a celebrated argument by James Otis in 1761. 
Then came the " Declaratory Resolves " of i 764, which were the 
precursors of the " Stamp Act." The discussion occasioned by 
these measures was more important than any other immediate 
effect they produced; they afforded an academy of political edu- 
cation for the people. Those who had called themselves Whigs 
gradually took the name of Patriots, and from Patriots they be- 
came " Sons of Liberty." Every successive measure struck at 
once the double chord of patriotism and pocket, so that " Liber- 
ty and property" became the common cry. The colonists took 
the position, which is found everywhere in Otis's " Rights of the 
Colonies," that their claims were not dependent on the validity 
of their charters, but that their rights as British subjects were 
quite sufficient to protect them. 

From this time forth the antagonism increased, and it so 
roused and united the people that the student wonders how it 
happened that the actual outbreak was delayed so long. It is 
quite remarkable, in view of the recognized differences among 
the colonies, that there should have been such unanimity in 
tone. There was hardly anything to choose, in point of weight 
and dignity, between the protests drawn up by Oxenbridge 
Thacher in Massachusetts, by Stephen Hopkins in Rhode Isl- 
and, by the brothers Livingston in New York, and by Lee and 
Wythe in Virginia. The Southern colonies, which suffered 
least from the exactions of the home government, made common 



228 



HISTORY OF THE U XI TED STATES. 



cause with those which suffered most. All the colonies claimed, 
in the words of the Virginia Assembly, " their ancient and inde- 
structible right of being governed by such laws respecting their 



spp W HI iBiBTM^iiN !l.r',|i|,ii|.,i •' 
ft'iii'ilCi ;,' |!' ', ;■ |i,i Mill l| ;-■ 




L(_)R1) CHAIHA.M. 
[After the picture by R. Brojnpton.] 



internal polity and taxation as were derived from their own con- 
sent, with the approbation of their sovereign or his substitute." 

The blow fell in 1765, with the Stamp Act — an act which 
would not have been unjust or unreasonable in England, and 



THE BRITISH YOKE. 



229 



was only held so in America because it involved the principle 
of taxing where there was no representation. For a moment 
the colonies seemed stunned ; then the bold protest of Patrick 
Henry in Virginia was taken up by James Otis in Massachu- 
setts. He it was who proposed an "American Congress" in 
1765, and though only nine out of the thirteen colonies sent 
delegates, this brought them nearer than ever before. It drew 
up its " Declaration of Rights." Then followed, in colony after 
colony, mobs and burnings in effigy; nobody dared to act as 
stamp officer. When the news reached England, the Earl of 
Chatham said : " The gentleman tells us that America is obsti- 
nate, America is almost in open rebellion. I rejoice that Amer- 
ica has resisted." Then came the riot between people and 
soldiers, called the "Boston Massacre," in 1770, and the capture 
by the people of the armed British schooner Gaspce, off Rhode 
Island, in 1772. In 1773 the tea was thrown into the harbor 
at Boston; at Annapolis it was burned; at Charlestown it was 
stored and left to spoil ; at New York and Philadelphia it was 
returned. The next year came the Boston Port Bill, received 
with public mourning in the other colonies, and with grim en- 
durance by the Bostonians. A thriving commercial city sud- 
denly found itself unable to receive any vessel whose cargo had 
not been first landed at a port then thirty miles away by road 
— Marblehead — or to discharge any except through a custom- 
house at Plymouth, then forty miles by road in the other direc- 
tion. All the industries of the place were stopped, and the 
price of fuel and provisions rose one-third ; for every stick of 
wood and every barrel of molasses had to be landed first on the 
wharf at Marblehead, and then laboriously reshipped to Boston, 
or be sent on the long road by land. But as tyranny usually 
reacts upon itself, the voluntary contributions which came from 
all parts of the colonies to the suffering city did more to cement 
a common feeling than years of prosperity could have done. 
In this chafed and oppressed position the people of Boston 



230 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




THE " BOSTON MASSACRE. 



awaited events, and the country looked on. Meanwhile the first 
Continental Congress had met at Philadelphia, September 5, 
1774, with a sole view to procuring a redress of grievances, the 
people of every colony pledging themselves in one form or 
another to abide by the decision of this body. In July of that 



THE BRITISH YOKE. 



2\\ 



year, long before the thought of separation took shape even in 
the minds of the leaders, Ezra Stiles wrote this prophecy : " If 
oppression proceeds, despotism may originate an American 
Magna Charta and Bill of Rights, supported by such intrepid 
and persevering importunity as even sovereignty may hereafter 
judge it not wise to withstand. There will be a Runnymede 
in America." Such was the change from 1640 to 1774; the 
mother-country which to Hooke signified paradise, to Stiles sig- 
nified oppression ; the one clergyman wrote to deprecate war in 
England, the other almost invoked it in America. 

The Congress met, every colony but little Georgia being 
soon represented. Its meeting signified that the colonies were 
at last united. In Patrick Henry's great opening speech he 




BURNING OF THE " GASPEE. 



232 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



said : " British oppression has effaced the boundaries of the sev- 
eral colonies ; the distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylva- 




REV, EZRA STILES, D.D., LL.D., PRESIDENT OF YALE COLLEGE, 1 777-1 795- 
[From the painting in the Trumbull Gallery, New Haven.] 

nians, New-Yorkers, and New-Englanders are no more. I am 
not a Virginian, but a New-Englander." 

There is, I think, an undue tendency in these days to ex- 
aggerate the differences between the colonies ; and in bringing 
them to the eve of a great struggle it is needful to consider 
how far they were different, and how far they were one. In 
fact, the points of resemblance among the different colonies far 
exceeded the points of difference. They were mainly of the 
same English race ; they were mainly Puritans in religion ; they 
bore with them the local institutions and traditions ; all held 
slaves, though in varying proportions. On the other hand, they 
were subject to certain variations of climate, pursuits, and local 



THE BRITISH YOKE. 



233 



institutions ; but, after all, these were secondary ; the resem- 
blances were more important. 

The style of architecture prevailing throughout the colonies 
in the early part of the eighteenth century gives proof enough 
that the mode of living among the higher classes at that period 
must everywhere have been much the same. The same great 
square edifices, the same stacks of chimneys, the same tiles, the 
same mahogany stairways, and the same carving are still to be 




PATRICK HENRY. 
[From the painting by Sully.] 



seen in the old dwellings of Portsmouth, Newburyport, Salem, 
Boston, Newport, Philadelphia, Annapolis, and Norfolk. When 
Washino^ton came from Mount Vernon to Cambrids^e as com- 
mander of the American army, he occupied as head-quarters a 



234 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

house resembling in many respects his own ; and this was one 
of a hne of similar houses, afterwards known as " Tory Row," 
and extending from Harvard College to Mount Auburn. These 
were but the types of the whole series of colonial or rather pro- 
vincial houses. North and South. Sometimes they were built 
of wood, the oaken frames being brought from England, some- 
times of bricks brought from Scotland, sometimes of stone. The 
chief difference between the Northern and Southern houses 
was that the chambers, being less important in a warm country, 
were less ample and comfortable in the Southern houses, and 
the windows were smaller, while for the same reason there was 
much more lavishness in the way of piazzas. Every one accus- 
tomed to the old Northern houses is surprised at the inadequate 
chambers of Mount Vernon, and it appears from the diary of 
Mr. Frost, a New England traveller in 1797, that he was then 
so struck with the smallness of the windows as to have made a 
note of it. The stairway at Arlington is singularly dispropor- 
tioned to the external dignity of the house, and there is a tra- 
dition that at the funeral of Jefferson the stairway of his house 
at Monticello proved too narrow for the coffin, so that it had 
to be lowered from the window. All this was the result of the 
out-door climate, and apart from these trivial variations the life 
North and South was much the same — stately and ceremonious 
in the higher classes,, with social distinctions much more thor- 
oughly marked than we are now accustomed to remember. 

We know by the private memoirs of the provincial period — 
for instance, from the charming recollections of Mrs. Quincy 
— that the costumes and manners of the upper classes were 
everywhere modelled on the English style of the period. Even 
after the war of independence, when the wealthier inhabitants 
of Boston had largely gone into exile at Halifax, the churches 
were still filled on important occasions with gentlemen wearing 
wigs, cocked hats, and scarlet cloaks ; and before the Revolu- 
tion the display must have been far greater. In Maryland, at 



THE BRITISH YOKE. 



235 



a somewhat earlier period, we find an advertisement in the 
Maryland Gazette of a servant who offers himself " to wait on 
table, curry horses, clean knives, boots and shoes, lay a table, 
shave, and dress wigs, carry a lantern, and talk French ; is as 
honest as the times will admit, and as sober as can be." From 
this standard of a servant's accomplishments we can easily 
infer the mode of life among the masters. 

A striking illustration of these social demarcations is to 
be found in the general catalogues, now called " triennial," or 
" quinquennial," of our older colleges. Down to the year i 768 
at Yale, and 1773 at Harvard, the students of each class will 
be found arranged in an order which is not alphabetical, as at 
the present day, but seems arbitrary. Not at all ; they were 
arranged according to the social positions of their parents ; 
and we know from the recollections of the venerable Paine 
Wingate that the first thing done by the college authorities 
on the admission of a new class was to ascertain by careful 
inquiry these facts. According to the result of the inquiry the 
young students were " placed " in the dining-hall and the recita- 
tion-room, and upon this was also based the choice of college 
rooms. Had they always retained this relative standing it 
would have been less galling, but while the most distinguished 
student could not rise in the list, the reprobates could fall; 
and the best scholar in the class might find himself not merely 
in a low position through his parentage, but flanked on each 
side by scions of more famed families who had been degraded 
by their own folly or vice. There could not be a more con- 
clusive proof that American provincial society, even in the 
Eastern colonies, was founded, before the final separation from 
England, on an essentially aristocratic basis. 

In the same connection it must be remembered that in the 
eighteenth century slavery gave the tone of manners through 
all the colonies. No matter how small the proportion of slaves, 
experience shows that it affected the whole habit of society. 



236 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




AN OUT-OF-DOOR TEA-PARTY IN COLONIAL NEW ENGLAND. 



In Massachusetts, in 1775, there was probably a population of 
some 350,000, of whom but 5000 were slaves. It was enough ; 
the effect followed. It was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, not 
in Virginia, that Longfellow found his tradition of the lady who 
was buried by her own order with slave attendants : 

" At her feet and at her head 
Lies a slave to attend the dead ; 
But their dust is as white as hers." 



THE BRITISH YOKE. 237 

It is curious to compare the command of this dying woman 
of the Vassall race — whether it was an act of arrogance or of 
humihty — with the self-humihation of a Virginia dame of the 
same period, who directed the burial of her body beneath that 
portion of the church occupied by the poor, since she had 
despised them in hfe, and wished them to trample upon her 
when dead. Let us consider, by way of further illustration, 
the way of living on the Narraganset shore of Rhode Island, 
and see how closely it resembled that of Virginia. 

The late venerable Isaac Peace Hazard, of Newport, Rhode 
Island, told me that his great-grandfather, Robert Hazard, of 
Narraganset, used in later life, when he had given away many 
of his farms to his children, to congratulate himself on the 
small limits to which he had reduced his household, having 
only seventy in parlor and kitchen. He occupied at one time 
nearly twelve thousand acres of land, and kept some four thou- 
sand sheep, from whose fleece his large household was almost 
wholly clothed. He had in his dairy twelve negro women, all 
slaves, and each having a young girl to assist her; each dairy- 
maid had the care of twelve cows, and they were expected 
to make from one to two dozen cheeses every day. This was 
the agricultural and domestic side ; the social life consisted of 
one long series of gay entertainments, visiting from house to 
house, fox-hunting and horse -racing with the then famous 
breed of Narraganset pacers. Mr. Isaac Hazard had known 
old men who in their youth had gone to Virginia to ride their 
own horses at races, and kept open house for the Virginia 
riders in return. To illustrate how thoroughly the habits of 
slavery were infused into the daily life, he told me that an- 
other of these Narraganset magnates, his great -uncle, Row- 
land Robinson, said, impulsively, one day, " I have not servants 
enough ; go fetch me some from Guinea." Upon this the 
master of a small packet of twenty tons, belonging to Mr. 
Robinson, fitted her out at once, set sail for Guinea, and 



238 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



brought home eighteen slaves, one of whom was a king's son. 
His employer burst into tears on their arrival, his order not 
having been seriously given. But all this was not in Mary- 
land or Virginia; it was in Rhode Island, and on a part of 
Rhode Island so much a place of resort for the leading Boston 
families that a portion of it is called Boston Neck to this day. 

These descriptions could be paralleled, though not fully, in 
all the Northern colonies. The description of the Schuyler 
family, and of their way of living at Albany, as given by Mrs. 
Grant of Laggan, about 1750, is quite on a par with these 
early scenes at Narraganset. In Connecticut it is recorded 
of John Peters, father of the early and malicious historian of 
that name, that he " aped the style of a British nobleman, built 
his house in a forest, kept his coach, and looked with some 
degree of scorn upon republicans." The stone house of the 
Lee family at Marblehead cost ^10,000; the house of God- 
frey Malbone at Newport cost ^20,000; the Wentworth house 
at Portsmouth had fifty-two rooms. Through all the colonies 
these evidences of a stately way of living were to be found. 

These facts are unquestionable, and would not so fully 
have passed out of sight but for another fact never yet fully 
explained. When the war of independence came it made no 
social change in the Southern provinces, but it made a social 
revolution in the Northern provinces. For some reason, per- 
haps only for the greater nearness to Nova Scotia, the gentry 
of New England took the loyal side and fled, while the gentry 
of Virginia fell in with the new movement, becoming its lead- 
ers. From my window, as I write, I have glimpses of some 
of the large houses of " Tory Row," in Cambridge, where, 
according to the contemporary description of the Baroness 
Riedesel, seven kindred families lived in the greatest luxury 
until the Revolution, all probably slave-holders, like the Vas- 
salls, and some of them owning plantations in Jamaica. All 
fled, most of their estates were confiscated, and the war trans- 



THE BRITISH YOKE. 



239 



ferred the leadership of the New England colonies, as Pro- 
fessor Sumner has lately well shown in his " Life of Jackson," 
to a new race of young lawyers. Hence all the ante-Revolu- 
tionary life disappeared, and was soon forgotten; slavery dis- 
appeared also, while the self- same social order still subsisted 
in Virginia, though constantly decaying, until a more recent 
war brought that also to an end. 

There was thus less of social difference amone the colo- 
nies than is often assumed, but the difference in municipal 
institutions was considerable. Every colony, so far as it was 
left free to do it, recognized the principle of popular govern- 
ment, limiting the suffrage by age, sex, race, or property, but 
recognizing the control of a majority of qualified electors as 
binding. As a rule, this gave a political status to the labor- 
ing class in the Northern colonies, but not in those where 
slavery prevailed and the laboring class was of a different race. 
We naturally do not obtain from the books of the period so 
clear a picture of the lower order of inhabitants as of the 
higher; perhaps the liveliest is to be found in the description 
of General Riedesel, where he represents the yeomen of New 
England as being thickset, tolerably tall, wearing blue frocks 
girt by a strap, and having their heads surmounted by yellow 
wigs, " with the honorable visage of a magistrate beneath ;" as 
being, moreover, rarely able to write ; inquisitive, curious, and 
zealous to madness for liberty. These were the people — as seen, 
be it remembered, through the vexed eyes of a defeated prisoner 
— who made up the citizenship of the Northern colonies. 

It is certain that the oreneral model for the Colonial q-qv- 
ernments, and even for our present State governments, dates 
back to the organization of the Virginia House of Burgesses, 
in 1 619; and all the colonies followed the same principle, with 
some important modifications. But when it came to the gov- 
ernment of small local communities there was a great varia- 
tion. The present system of New England town government 



240 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

had its beginning, according to Professor Joel Parker, in the 
action of the inhabitants of Charlestown, Massachusetts, when 
they adopted, on February lo, 1634-35, an order, which still 
stands on the record -book, "for the governm't of the Tdwne 
by Selectmen," thus giving to eleven persons, " w"' the advice 
of Pastor and teacher desired in any case of conscience," the 
authority to manage their local affairs for one year. Since 
Professor Parker wrote, however, the researches of the Boston 
Record Commission have brought to light a similar grant of 
power by the planters of Dorchester (Oct. 8, 1633), authorizing 
twelve men, " selected of the company " to^ have charge of its 
affairs. This form of self-government, which could be per- 
fectly combined with the existence of slavery on a small scale, 
was inconsistent with a system of great plantations, like those 
in the Southern colonies ; and it was this fact more than any- 
thing else which developed such difference in character as 
really existed. The other fact that labor was held in more 
respect in the Northern colonies than in the Southern had 
doubtless something to do with it ; but, after all, there was 
then less philosophizing on that subject than now, and the 
main influence was the town meeting. When John Adams 
was called upon by Major Langbourne to explain the differ- 
ence of character between Virginia and New England, Mr. 
Adams offered to give him a receipt for creating a New Eng- 
land in Virginia. It consisted of four points, " town meetings, 
training-days, town schools, and ministers." Each colony really 
based its local institutions, in some form, on English traditions ; 
l3ut the system of town government, as it prevailed in the East- 
ern colonies, has struck deepest root, and has largely influ- 
enced the new civilization of the West. Thus, with varied 
preparation, but with a common need and an increasing unity, 
the several colonies approached the 19th of April, 1775, when 
the shot was fired that was " heard round the world." 



X. 

THE DAWNING OF INDEPENDENCE. 

WHEN France, in 1763, surrendered Canada to England, 
it suddenly opened men's eyes to a very astonishing 
fact. They discovered that British America had at once be- 
come a country so large as to make England seem ridiculously 
small. Even the cool-headed Dr. Franklin, writing that same 
year to Mary Stevenson in London, spoke of England as " that 
petty island which, compared to America, is but a stepping- 
stone in a brook, scarce enough of it above water to keep one's 
shoes dry." The far-seeing French statesmen of the period 
looked at the matter in the same way. Choiseul, the Prime- 
minister who ceded Canada, claimed afterwards that he had 
done it in order to destroy the British nation by creating for it 
a rival. This assertion was not made till ten years later, and 
may very likely have been an after-thought, but it was destined 
to be confirmed by the facts. 

We have now to deal with the outbreak of a contest which 
was, according to the greatest of the English statesmen of the 
period, " a most accursed, wicked, barbarous, cruel, unnatural, 
unjust, and diabolical war." No American writer ever employed 
to describe it a combination of adjectives so vigorous as those 
here brought together by the elder Pitt, afterwards Lord Chat- 
ham. The rights for which Americans fought seemed to them 
to be the common rights of Englishmen, and many Englishmen 
thought the same. On the other hand, we are now able ta do 

16 



242 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

justice to the position of those American loyahsts who honestly 
beheved that the attempt at independence was a mad one, and 
who sacrificed all they had rather than rebel against their King. 
" The annals of the world," wrote Massachusettensis, the ablest 
Tory pamphleteer in America, " have not been deformed with 
a single instance of so unnatural, so causeless, so wanton, so 
wicked a rebellion." When we compare this string of epithets 
employed upon the one side with those of Pitt upon the other, 
we see that the war at the outset was not so much a contest of 
nations as of political principles. Some of the ablest men in 
England defended the American cause ; some of the ablest in 
the colonies took the loyal side. 

Boston in the winter of 1774-75 ^^'^.s a town of some 17,000 
inhabitants, garrisoned by some 3000 British troops. It was 
the only place in the Massachusetts colony where the royal 
governor exercised any real authority, and where the laws of 
Parliament had any force. The result was that its life was 
paralyzed, its people gloomy, and its commerce dead. The 
other colonies were still hoping to obtain their rights by policy 
or by legislation, by refusing to import or to consume, and they 
watched with constant solicitude for some riotous demonstration 
in Boston, On the other hand, the popular leaders in that town 
were taking the greatest pains that there should be no outbreak. 
There was risk of one whenever soldiers were sent on any expe- 
dition into the country. One might have taken place at Marsh- 
field in January, one almost happened at Salem in February, yet 
still it was postponed. No publicity was given to the patriotic 
military organizations in Boston ; as little as possible was said 
about the arms and stores that were gathered in the country. 
Not a life had been lost in any popular excitement since the 
Boston Massacre in 1770. The responsibility of the first shot, 
the people were determined, must rest upon the royal troops. 
So far was this carried that it was honestly attributed by the 
British soldiers to cowardice alone. An officer, quoted by 



THE DAWNING OF INDEPENDENCE, 



243 




PAUL REVERE. 



Frothlngham, wrote home in November, 1774: "As to what 
you hear of their taking arms to resist the force of England, 
it is mere bullying, and will go no farther than words ; when- 
ever it comes to blows, he that can run the fastest will think 
himself best off ; believe me, any two reghnents here ought to 
be decimated if they did not beat in the field the whole force 



244 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

of the Massachusetts province ; for though they are numerous, 
they are but a mere mob, without order or disciph'ne, and very 
awkward at handhn^ their arms." 

But whatever may have been the hope of carrying their 
point without fighting, the provincial authorities were steadily 
collecting provisions, arms, and ammunition. Unhappily these 
essentials were hard to obtain. On April 19, 1775, the commit- 
tees of safety could only count up twelve field-pieces in Massa- 
chusetts ; and there had been collected in that colony 21,549 
fire-arms, 17,441 pounds of powder, 22,191 pounds of ball, 
144,699 flints, io,ioS bayonets, 11,979 pouches, 15,000 canteens. 
There were also 17,000 pounds of salt fish, 35,000 pounds of 
rice, with large c[uantities of beef and pork. Viewed as an 
evidence of the forethought of the colonists, these statistics are 
remarkable ; but there was something heroic and indeed almost 
pathetic in the project of going to war with the British govern- 
ment on the strength of twelve field-pieces and seventeen thou- 
sand pounds of salt fish. 

Yet when, on the night of the iSth of April, 1775, Paul 
Revere rode beneath the bris^ht moonlio^ht throufjh Lexino^ton 
to Concord, with Dawes and Prescott for comrades, he was 
carrying the signal for the independence of a nation. He had 
seen across the Charles River the two lights from the church- 
steeple in Boston which were to show that a British force was 
going out to seize the patriotic supplies at Concord ; he had 
warned Hancock and Adams at Rev. Jonas Clark s parsonage 
in Lexington, and had rejected Sergeant Monroe's caution 
against unnecessary noise, with the rejoinder, " You'll have 
noise enough here before long — the regulars are coming out.'' 
As he galloped on his way the regulars were advancing with 
steady step behind him, soon warned of their own danger 
by alarm-bells and signal -guns. When Revere was captured 
by some British officers who happened to be near Concord, 
Colonel Smith, the commander of the expedition, had already 



THE DA IVNING OF INDEPEXDENCE. 245 

halted, ordered Pitcairn forward, and sent back prudently for 
reinforcements. It was a nioht of terror to all the neighbor- 
ing Middlesex towns, for no one knew what excesses the angry 
British troops might commit on their return march. The best 
picture we have of this alarm is in the narrative of a Cambridge 
woman, Mrs. Hannah Winthrop, describing "the horrors of that 
midnight cry," as she calls it. The women of that town were 
roused by the beat of drums and ringing of bells ; they hastily 
gathered their children together and fled to the outlying farm- 
houses ; seventy or eighty of them were at Fresh Pond, within 
hearing of the guns at Menotomy, now Arlington. The next 
day their husbands bade them flee to Andover, whither the col- 
lege property had been sent, and thither they went, alternately 
walking and riding, over fields where the bodies of the slain 
lay unburied. 

\ Before 5 a.m. on April 19, 1775, the British troops had 
reached Lexington Green, where thirty-eight men, under Cap- 
tain Parker, stood up before six hundred or eight hundred to 
be shot at, their captain saying, " Don't fire unless you are fired 
on; but if they want a war, let it begin here." It began there; 
they were fired upon ; they fired rather ineffectually in return, 
while seven were killed and nine wounded. The rest, after re- 
treating, reformed and pursued the British towards Concord, 
capturing seven stragglers — the first prisoners taken in the war. 
Then followed the fifjht at Concord, where four hundred and 
fifty Americans, instead of thirty-eight, were rallied to meet the 
British. The fighting took place between two detachments at 
the North Bridge, where 

" once the embattled farmers stood, 
And fired the shot heard round the world." 

There the American captain, Isaac Davis, was killed at the first 
shot — he who had said, when his company was placed at the 
head of the little column, " I haven't a man that is afraid to go." 

16* 



246 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 







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V J 








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LEXINGTON GREEN.— " IF THEY WANT A WAR, LET IT BEGIN HERE. 

He fell, and Major Buttrick gave the order, " Fire ! for God's 
sake, fire !" in return. The British detachment retreated in dis- 
order, but their main body was too strong to be attacked, so 
they disabled a few cannon, destroyed some barrels of flour, cut 



THE DA WNING OF INDEPEXDEXCE. 



247 



down the liberty-pole, set fire to the court-house, and then began 
their return march. It ended in a flight; they were exposed to 
a constant guerilla fire; minute-men flocked behind every tree 
and house ; and only the foresight of Colonel Smith in sending 
for reinforcements had averted a surrender. At 2 p.m., near 
Lexington, Percy with his troops met the returning fugitives, and 
formed a hollow square, into which they ran and threw them- 
selves on the ground exhausted. Then Percy in turn fell back. 
Militia still came pouring 
in from Dorchester, Milton, 
Dedham, as well as the 
nearer towns, A company 
from Danvers marched six- 
teen miles in four hours. 
The Americans lost ninety- 
three in killed, wounded, 
and missing that day ; the 
British, two hundred and 
seventy-three. But the im- 
portant result was that ev- 
ery American colony now- 
recognized that war had 
begun. 

How men's minds were 
affected may best be seen 
by a glimpse at a day in 

the life of one leading patriot. Early on the morning of the 
19th of April, 1775, a messenger came hastily to the door, of 
Dr. Joseph Warren, physician, in Boston, and chairman of the 
Boston Committee of Safety, with the news that there had been 
fighting at Lexington and Concord. Dr. Warren, doing first 
the duty that came nearest, summoned his pupil, Mr. Eustis, 
and directed him to take care of his patients for that day ; then 
mounted his horse and rode to the Charlestown Ferry. As he 




DR. JOSEPH WARREN. 



248 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



entered the boat he remarked to an acquaintance : " Keep up a 
brave heart. They have begun it — that, either party can do ; 
and we'll end it — that, only we can do." After landing in 
Charlestown he met a certain Dr. Welch, who says, in a manu- 
script statement: "Eight o'clock in the morning saw Dr. Joseph 
Warren just come out of Boston, horseback. I said, 'Well, they 




GENERAL WILLIAM HEATH. 



are gone out.' ' Yes,' he said, ' and we will be up with them be- 
fore night.' " Apparently the two physicians jogged on together, 
'tried to pass Lord Percy's column of reinforcements, but were 
stopped by bayonets. Then Dr. Welch went home, and Dr. 
Warren probably attended a meeting of the Committee of 
Safety, held " at the Black Horse in Menotomy," or West Cam- 



THE DAWNING OF INDEPENDENCE. 249 

bridge. This committee had authority from the Provincial 
Congress to order out the mihtia, and General Heath, who was 
a member of the committee, rode to take command of the 'pro- 
vincials, with Warren by his side, who was sufficiently exposed 
that day to have a musket-ball strike the pin out of the hair 
of his ear-lock. The two continued together till the British 
army had crossed Charlestown Neck oij its retreat, and made 
a stand on Bunker Hill. There they were covered by the 
ships. The militia were ordered to pursue no further, and 
General Heath held the first council of war of the Revolution 
at the foot of Prospect Hill. 

With the fervor of that day s experience upon him Warren 
wrote, on the day following, this circular to the town in behalf 
of the Committee of Safety. The original still exists in the 
Massachusetts archives, marked with much interlineation. 

"Gentlemen, — The barbarous murders committed on our innocent breth- 
ren on Wednesday, the 19th instant, have made it absolutely necessary that we 
immediately raise an army to defend our wives and our children from the 
butchering hands of an inhuman soldiery, who, incensed at the obstacles they 
met with in their bloody progress, and enraged at being repulsed from the field 
of slaughter, will without the least doubt take the first opportunity in their pow- 
er to ravage this devoted country with fire and sword. We conjure you, there- 
fore, by all that is dear, by all that is sacred, that you give all assistance possi- 
ble in forming an army. Our all is at stake. Death and devastation are the 
instant consequences of delay. Every moment is infinitely precious. An hour 
lost may deluge your country in blood, and entail perpetual slavery upon the 
few of your posterity who may survive the carnage. We beg and entreat, as 
you will answer to your country, to your own consciences, and, above all, as you 
will answer to God himself, that you will hasten and encourage by all possible 
means the enlistment of men to form the army, and send them forward to head- 
quarters at Cambridge with that expedition which the vast importance and in- 
stant urgency of the affair demand." 

It is always hard to interpret the precise condition of public 
feeling just before a war. It is plain that the Massachusetts 
committee expected something more than a contest of words 
when they made so many preparations. On the other hand, it 
is evident that hardly any one looked forward to any serious 



250 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



and prolonged strife. Dr. Warren wrote, soon after the 19th 
of April : " The people never seemed in earnest about the mat- 
ter until after the engagement of the 19th ult., and I verily be- 







r^^ 











^ 




FAC-SIMILE OF WARREN'S ADDRESS. 



lieve that the night preceding the barbarous outrages commit- 
ted by the soldiery at Lexington, Concord, etc., there were not 
fifty people in the whole colony that ever expected any blood 
would be shed in the contest between us and Great Britain." 



THE DAWNING OF INDEPENDENCE. 25 1 

Yet two clays after the fight at Lexington the Massachusetts 
Committee of Safety resolved to enlist eight thousand men. 
Two days after that the news reached New York at noon. 
There was a popular outbreak ; the royal troops were disarmed, 
the fort and magazines seized, and two transports for Boston 
unloaded. At five on Monday afternoon the tidings reached 
Philadelphia, when the bell in Independence Hall was rung, 
and the people gathered in numbers. When it got so far as 
Charleston, South Carolina, the people seized the arsenal, and 
the Provincial Congress proclaimed them "ready to sacrifice 
their lives and fortunes." In Savannah, Georgia, a mob took 
possession of the powder-magazine, and raised a liberty- pole. 
In Kentucky a party of hunters, hearing of the battle, gave 
their encampment the name of Lexington, which it still bears ; 
and thus the news went on. 

Meanwhile, on May loth, the Continental Congress con- 
vened, and on the same day Ethan Allen took possession of 
the strong fortress of Ticonderoga. It was the first act of 
positive aggression by the patriotic party, for at both Lexing- 
ton and Concord they were acting on the defensive. The ex- 
pedition was planned in Connecticut and reinforced in West- 
ern Massachusetts, but the main reliance was to be placed on 
Ethan Allen and his " Green Mountain Boys," whose daring 
and energy w^ere already well knowai. Benedict Arnold, who 
had been commissioned in Massachusetts for the same purpose, 
arrived only in time to join the expedition as a volunteer. On 
May 10, 1775, eighty -three men crossed the lake with Allen. 
When they had landed, he warned them that it was a dangerous 
enterprise, and called for volunteers. Every man volunteered. 
The rest took but a few moments. They entered with a war- 
whoop the open wicket-gate, pressing by the sentinel, and when 
the half-clad commander appeared and asked their authority, 
Allen answ^ered with the words that have become historic, " In 
the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." 



252 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

The Congress was only to meet that day, but it appeared al- 
ready to be exercising a sort of antenatal authority; and a for- 
tress which had cost eight million pounds sterling and many 
lives was placed in its hands by a mere stroke of boldness. 
Crown Point gave' itself up with equal ease to Seth Warner, and 
another dramatic surprise was given to the new-born nation, l.- 

In the neighborhood of Boston the month of May was de- 
voted to additional preparations, and to what are called, in the 
old stage directions of Shakespeare's plays, "alarums and excur- 
sions." At one time, when a sally from Boston was expected, 
the Committee of Safety ordered the officers of the ten nearest 
towns to assemble one-half the militia and all the minute-men, 
and march to Roxbury. While this was being done, General 
Thomas, with an ingenuity quite in the style of the above stage 
motto, marched his seven hundred men round and round a high 
hill, visible from Boston, to mislead the British. At another 
time, when men were more numerous, General Putnam marched 
all the troops in Cambridge, twenty-two hundred in number, to 
Charlestown Ferry, the column being spread over a mile and a 
half, and passing under the guns of the British without attack. 
At another time, "all of Weymouth, Braintree, and Hingham," 
according to Mrs. Adams, turned out to drive away a British 
detachment from Grape Island, where the Americans then 
landed, burned a quantity of hay, and brought away cattle. A 
larger skirmish took place at Noddle's Island, near East Bos- 
ton, where the Americans destroyed a schooner, dismantled a 
sloop, and captured twelve swivels and four 4-pound cannon. 
Putnam commanded in this engagement, and the enthusiasm 
which it called out secured his unanimous election as major- 
general. 

Meantime the Provincial troops were gathering for what 
the Essex Gazette, of June 8th, called, with rather premature 
admiration, " the grand American army" — an army whose re- 
turns for June 9th showed 7644 men. "Nothing could be in 



THE DAWNING OF INDEPENDENCE. 253 

a more confused state," wrote Dr. Eliot, " than the army which 
first assembled at Cambridge. This undisciplined body of men 
were kept together by a few who deserved well of their coun- 
try." President John Adams, writing long after (June 19, 1818), 
thus summed up the condition of these forces : 

"The army at Cambridge was not a national army, for there was no nation. 
It was not a United States army, for there were no United States. It was not 
an army of united colonies, for it could not be said in any sense that the col- 
onies were united. The centre of their union, the Congress of Philadelphia, 
had not adopted nor acknowledged the army at Cambridge. It was not a New 
England army, for New England had not associated. New England had no 
legal legislature, nor any common executive authority, even upon the principles 
of original authority, or even of original power in the people. Massachusetts 
had her army, Connecticut her army, New Hampshire her army, and Rhode 
Island her army. These four armies met at Cambridge, and imprisoned the 
British army in Boston. But who was the sovereign of this united, or rather 
congregated, army, and who its commander-in-chief } It had none. Putnam, 
Poor, and Greene were as independent of \Vard as Ward was of them." 

This was the state of the forces outside, while the army in- 
side was impatiently waiting for reinforcements, and chafing at 
the ignoble delay. On May 25th three British generals (Howe, 
Clinton, and Burgoyne) arrived with troops. The newspapers 
of the day say that when these officers were going into Boston 
harbor they met a packet coming out, when General Burgoyne 
asked the skipper of the packet what news there was. And 
being told that the town was surrounded by ten thousand coun- 
try people,* asked how many regulars there were in Boston; and 
being answered, "About five thousand," cried out, with aston- 
ishment, " What ! and ten thousand peasants keep five thousand 
king's troops shut up! Well, let us get in, and we'll soon find 
elbow-room." After this conversation the nickname of " Elbow- 
room " was permanently fastened on General Burgoyne. He 
used to relate that after his reverses, while a prisoner of war, 
he was received with great courtesy by the people of Boston as 
he stepped from the Charlestown ferry-boat, but was a little an- 
noyed when an old lady, perched on a shed above the crowd, 



254 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

cried out. in a shrill voice, " Make way ! make way ! The gen- 
eral's coming ; give him elbow-room." 

Two days before the battle of Bunker Hill, Mrs. Adams 
wrote to her husband, John Adams : " Gage's proclamation you 
will receive by this conveyance, and the records of time cannot 
produce a blacker page. Satan when driven from the realms 
of bliss exhibited not more malice. Surely the father of lies is 
superseded. Yet we think it the best proclamation he could 
have issued." This proclamation announced martial law, but 
offered pardon to those who would give in their allegiance to 
the government, "excepting only from the benefit of such par- 
don Samuel Adams and John Hancock, whose offences are of 
too flagitious a nature to admit of any other consideration than 
that of condign punishment." He afterwards remarked that the 
rebels added " insult to outrage " as, " with a preposterous pa- 
rade of militar)^ arrangement, they affected to hold the army 
Lesieged." 

^ Two things contributed to bring about the battle of Bunker 
Hill : the impatience of British troops under the " affectation " 
of a siege; on the other hand, the great increase of self-confi- 
dence among the provincials after Lexington and Concord. It 
was a military necessity, no doubt, for each side, to occupy the 
Charlestown heights ; but there was also a growing disposition 
to bring matters to a crisis on the first favorable opportunity. 
Captain (afterwards Lord) Harris wrote home to England (June 
1 2th): "I wish the Americans may be brought to a sense of 
their duty. One good drubbing, which I long to give them by 
way of retaliation, might have a good effect towards it." Dr. 
Warren, on the other hand, wrote (May i6th) that if General 
Gage would only make a sally from Boston, he would " gratify 
thousands who impatiently wait to avenge the blood of their 
murdered countrymen." With such dispositions on both sides, 
the collision could not be far off. Kinglake says that the rea- 
sons for a battle rarely seem conclusive except to a general who 



THE DAWNING OF INDEPENDENCE. 



255 



has some positive taste for fighting. Had not something of 
this impulse existed on both sides in 1775, the American rebels 
would probably not have fortified Bunker Hill, or the English 
general might have besieged and starved them out without firing 
a shot. 




SAMUEL ADAMS. 



It is needless to add another to the innumerable descriptions 
of the battle of Bunker Hill. Every Englishman who comes to 
America feels renewed astonishment that a monument should 
have been built on the scene of a defeat. Every American 
school -boy understands that the monument celebrates a fact 



256 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

more important than most victories, namely, that the raw pro- 
vincials faced the British army for two hours, they themselves 
being under so little organization that it is impossible to tell 
even at this day who was their commander; that they did this 
with only the protection of an unfinished earthwork and a rail 
fence, retreating only when their powder was out. Tried by 
the standards of regular warfare even at that day, a breastwork 
twice that of Bunker Hill would have been accounted but a 
moderate obstacle. When in the previous century the fright- 
ened citizens of Dorchester, England, had asked a military en- 
gineer whether their breastworks could resist Prince Rupert's 
soldiers, he answered, " I have seen them running up walls twen- 
ty feet high ; these defences of yours may possibly keep them 
out half an hour." The flimsy defences of Bunker Hill kept 
back General Howe's soldiers for two hours, and until the un- 
tried provincials had fired their last shot. It was a fact worth 
a monument. \ 

The best descriptions of the battle itself are to be found in 
the letters of provincial officers and soldiers preserved in the 
appendix to Richard Frothingham's "Siege of Boston." It is 
the descriptions of raw soldiers that are always most graphic ; 
as they grow more familiar with war, their narratives grow tame. 
It is a sufiicient proof of the impression made in England by 
the affair that the newspapers of that nation, instead of being 
exultant, were indignant or apologetic, and each had its own 
theory in regard to " the innumerable errors of that day," as the 
London Chronicle called them. Tried by this test of contem- 
porary criticism, the Americans do not seem to have exagger- 
ated the real importance of the event. " The ministerial troops 
gained the hill," wrote William Tudor to John Adams, " but 
were victorious losers. A few more such victories, and they 
are undone." By the official accounts these troops lost in killed 
and wounded 1054 — about one in four of their number, including 
an unusually large proportion of oflJicers — while the Americans 



THE DAWNING OF INDEPENDENCE. ' 257 

lost but half as many, about 450, out of a total of from two to 
three thousand. But the numbers were nothing; the fact that 
the provincials had resisted regular troops was everythino-. 

The "great American army" was still growing at Cam- 
bridge ; it had been adopted by Congress, even before the bat- 
tle, and George Washington, of Virginia, had been unanimously 
placed in command, by recommendation of the New England 
delegates. He assumed this authority beneath the historic 
elm-tree at Cambridge, July 3, 1775. On the 9th he held a 
council of war of the newly organized general officers. The 
whole force was still from New England, and consisted of 
16,770 infantry and 585 artillerymen. These were organized 
in three divisions, each comprising two brigades, usually of six 
regiments each. They had a long series of posts to garrison, 
and they had nine rounds of ammunition per man. Worst of 
all, they were still, in the words of Washington, " a mixed mul- 
titude of people, under very little discipline." Their whole ap- 
pearance under the new organization may be best seen from the 
contemporary description by the Rev. William Emerson, grand- 
father of our great poet and essayist : 

" There is great overturning in the camp, as to order and regularity. New 
lords, new laws. The Generals Washington and Lee are upon the lines every 
day. New orders from his Excellency are read to the respective regiments every 
morning after prayers. The strictest government is taking place, and great dis- 
tinction is made between officers and soldiers. Every one is made to know his 
place, and keep in it, or be tied up and receive thirty or forty lashes, according 
to his crime. Thousands are at work every day from four till eleven o'clock in 
the morning. It is surprising how much work has been done. The lines are 
extended almost from Cambridge to Mystic River, so that very soon it will be 
morally impossible for the enemy to get between the works, except in one place, 
which is supposed to be left purposely unfortified to entice the enemy out of 
their fortresses. Who would have thought, twelve months past, that all Cam- 
bridge and Charlestown would be covered over with Americafi camps and cut 
up into forts and intrenchments, and all the lands, fields, orchards, laid common 
— horses and cattle feeding in the choicest mowing land, whole fields of corn 
eaten down to the ground, and large parks of well-regulated locusts cut down 
for firewood and other public uses ! This, I must say, looks a little melan- 
choly. My quarters are at the foot of the famous Prospect Hill, where such 

17 



258 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

great preparations are made for the reception of the enem}'. It is very div^ert- 
ing to walk among the camps. They are as different in their form as the own- 
ers are in their dress ; and every tent is a portraiture of the temper and taste 
of the persons who encamp in it. Some are made of boards, and some of sail- 
cloth. Some partly of one, and some partly of the other. Again, others are 
made of stone and turf, brick or brush. Some are thrown up in a hurry ; oth- 
ers curiously wrought with doors and windows, done with wreaths and withes, 
in the manner of a basket. Some are your proper tents and marquees, looking 
like the regular camp of the enemy. In these are the Rhode-Islanders, who 
are furnished with tent equipage and everything in the most exact English 
style. However, I think this great variety is rather a beauty than a blemish 
in the army." 

All that was experienced on both sides at the beginning of 
the late American civil war, in respect to rawness of soldiery, 
inexperienced ofBcers, short enlistments, local jealousies, was 
equally known in the early Continental army, and was less 
easily remedied. Even the four New England colonies that 
supplied the first troops were distrustful of one another and of 
Washington, and this not without some apparent reason. In a 
state of society which, as has been shown, was essentially aris- 
tocratic, they had suddenly lost their leaders. Nearly one-third 
of the community, including almost all those to whom social 
deference had been paid, had taken what they called the loyal, 
and others the Tory, side. Why should this imported Virgin- 
ian be more trustworthy.^ Washington in turn hardly did jus- 
tice to the material with which he had to deal. He found that 
in Massachusetts, unlike Virginia, the gentry were loyal to the 
King ; those with whom he had to consult were mainly farmers 
and mechanics — a class such as hardly existed in Virginia, and 
which was then far rougher and less intelligent than the same 
class now is. They were obstinate, suspicious, jealous. They 
had lost their natural leaders, the rich men, the royal council- 
lors, the judges, and had to take up with new and improvised 
guides — physicians like Warren — " Doctor-general " Warren, as 
the British officers called him, — or skilled mechanics like Paul 
Revere, or unemployed lawyers and business men like those 



THE DAWNING OF INDEPENDENCE. 259 

whom Governor Shirley described as " that brace of Adamses." 
The few men of property and consequence who stood by them, 
as Hancock and Prescott, were the exceptions. There were 
few on the patriotic side of whom it could be said, as Hutchin- 
son said of Oxenbridge Thacher, " He was not born a plebeian, 
but he was resolved to die one." Their line officers were men 
taken almost at random from among themselves, sometimes 
turning out admirably, sometimes shamefully. Washington 
cashiered a colonel and five captains for cowardice or dishonesty 
during the first summer. The Continental army as it first as- 
sembled in Cambridge was, as was said of another army on a 
later occasion, an aggregation of town -meetings, and, which is 
worse, of town-meetings from which all the accustomed leaders 
had suddenly been swept away. No historian has yet fully por- 
trayed the extent to which this social revolution in New Eng- 
land embarrassed all the early period of the war, or shown how 
it made the early Continental troops chafe under Washington 
and Schuyler, and prefer in their secret souls to be led by Gen- 
eral Putnam, whom they could call " Old Put," and who rode to 
battle in his shirt-sleeves. 

And, on the other hand, we can now see that there was some 
foundation for these criticisms on Washinorton. With the hish- 
est principle and the firmest purpose, his views of military gov- 
ernment were such as no American army in these days would 
endure for a month. His methods were simply despotic. He 
thought that the Massachusetts Provincial Legislature should 
impress men into the Revolutionary army, should provide them 
with food and clothes only, not with pay, and should do nothing 
for their families. He himself, having declined the offered $500 
per month, served his country for his expenses only, and so, he 
thought, should they, overlooking the difference between those 
whose households depended only on themselves, and those who, 
like himself, had left slaves at work on their broad plantations. 
He thought that officers and men should be taken from differ- 



26o HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

ent social classes, that officers should have power almost abso- 
lute, and that camp offences should be punished by the lash. 
These imperial methods produced a good effect, on the whole ; 
probably it was best that the general should err on one side if 
the army erred on the other. But there is no doubt that much 
of the discontent, the desertion, the uncertain enlistments, of 
the next two years proceeded from the difficulty found by Wash- 
ington in adapting himself to the actual condition of the people, 
especially the New England people. It is the highest proof of 
his superiority that he overcame not merely all other obstacles, 
but even his own mistakes. 

Such as it was, the army remained in camp long enough to 
make everybody impatient. The delay was inevitable ; it was 
easier to provide even discipline than powder ; the troops kept 
going and coming because of short enlistments, and more than 
once the whole force was reduced to ten thousand men. With 
that patience which was one of Washington's strongest military 
qualities he withstood dissatisfaction within and criticism from 
without until the time had come to strike a heavier blow. 
Then, in a single night, he fortified Dorchester Heights, and 
this forced the evacuation of Boston. The British generals had 
to seek elbow-room elsewhere. They left Boston March 17, 
1776, taking with them twelve hundred American loyalists, the 
bulk of what called itself " society " in New England. The 
navy went to Halifax, the army to New York, whither Wash- 
ington soon took his Continental army also. Once there, he 
found new obstacles. From the very fact that they had not sent 
away their loyalists, there was less of unanimity among the New 
York people, nor had they been so well trained by the French 
and Indian wars. The New England army was now away from 
home ; it was unused to marches or evolutions, but it had 
learned some confidence in itself and in its commander, though 
it did not always do credit to either. It was soon reinforced 
by troops from the Middle States, but a period of disaster fol- 




SERGEANT JASPER AT THE BATTLE OF FORT MOULTRIE. 



THE DAWNING OF INDEPENDENCE. 263 

lowed, which severely tested the generalship of Washington. 
He no longer had, as in Massachusetts, all the loyalists shut 
up in the opposing camp ; he found them scattered through the 
community. Long Island was one of their strongholds, and re- 
ceived the Continental army much less cordially than the Brit- 
ish army was received at Staten Island. The Hudson River 
was debatable ground between opposing factions ; Washington's 
own military family held incipient traitors. The outlook was 
not agreeable in any direction, at least in the Northern colonies, 
where the chief contest lay. 

There was a disastrous advance into Canada, under Mont- 
gomery and Arnold, culminating in the defeat before Quebec 
December 30, 1775, and the retreat conducted the next spring 
by Thomas and Sullivan. It was clearly a military repulse, but 
it was a great comfort to John Adams, locking from the re- 
moteness of Philadelphia, to attribute all to a quite subordinate 
cause. " Our misfortunes in Canada," he wrote to his wife, June 
26, 1776, "are enough to melt a heart of stone. The small-pox 
is ten times more terrible than Britons, Canadians, and Indians 
together. This was the cause of our precipitate retreat from 
Quebec." Thus was disappointment slightly mitigated ; but in 
the Carolinas, about the same time, it was the British who were 
disappointed, and the defence of Fort Moultrie especially gave 
comfort to all the patriotic party. It was a brilliant achieve- 
ment, where the fate of Charleston and the Carolinas was deter- 
mined by the defence of a fortress of palmetto logs, manned by 
less than five hundred men, under Moultrie, aided by Motte, 
Marion, and the since -renowned Sergeant Jasper. They had 
thirty-one cannon, but only a scanty supply of powder. Over 
them waved a flag of blue, with a crescent inscribed " Liberty." 
Against them was a squadron of British ships, some of them 
carrying fifty guns ; and they defended themselves so success- 
fully for ten hours that the British invasion was checked and 
then abandoned. This happened on June 28, 1776, just in 



264 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

time to counteract the discourage'ment that came from the fatal 
Canadian campaign. 

The encouragement was needed. Just before the time 
when the Continental Congress had begun its preliminary 
work on the great Declaration, General Joseph Reed, the newly 
appointed adjutant -general, and one of Washington's most 
trusted associates, was writing thus from the field : 

"With an army of force before, and a secret one behind, we stand on a 
point of land with six thousand old troops, if a year's service of about half can 
entitle them to this name, and about fifteen hundred raw levies of the province, 
many disaffected and more doubtful. Every man, from the general to the 
private, acquainted with our true situation, is exceedingly discouraged. Had 
I known the true posture of affairs, no consideration would have tempted me 
to take part in this scene ; and this sentiment is universal." 



XI. 

* THE GREAT DECLARATION. 

IN the days of the Continental Congress the delegates used 
to travel to the capital, at the beginning of each session, 
from their several homes, usually on horseback ; fording 
streams, sleeping at miserable country inns, sometimes weath- 
er-bound for days, sometimes making circuits to avoid threat- 
ened dangers, sometimes accomplishing forced marches to 
reach Philadelphia in time for some special vote. There lie 
before me the unpublished papers of one of the signers of the 
great Declaration, and these papers comprise the diaries of 
several such journeys. Their simple records rarely include 
bursts of patriotism or predictions of national glory, but they 
contain many plaintive chronicles of bad beds and worse food, 
mingled with pleasant glimpses of wayside chat, and now and 
then a bit of character-painting that recalls the jovial narra- 
tives of Fielding. Sometimes they give a passing rumor of 
"the glorious news of the surrendering of the Colonel of the 
Queen's Dragoons with his whole army," but more commonly 
they celebrate " milk toddy and bread and butter " after a wet- 
ting, or " the best dish of Bohea tea I have drank for a twelve- 
month." When they arrived at Philadelphia, the delegates 
put up their horses, changed their riding gear for those gar- 
ments which Trumbull has immortalized, and gathered to In- 
dependence Hall to greet their brother delegates, to inter- 
change the gossip of the day, to repeat Dr. Franklin's last 



266 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




TRUMBULL'S "SIGNING OF THE DECLARATION." 



anecdote or Francis Hopkinson's last joke ; then proceeding, 
when the business of the day was opened, to lay the foundation 
for a new nation. 

"Before the 19th of April, 1775," said Jefferson,"! had 
never heard a whisper of a disposition to separate from the 
mother-country." Washington said : " When I first took com- 
mand of the army (July 3, 1775), I abhorred the idea of inde- 
pendence ; but I am now fully convinced that nothing else 
will save us." It is only by dwelling on such words as these 
that we can measure that vast educational process which 
brought the American people to the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence in 1776. 

The Continental Congress, in the earlier months of that 
year, had for many days been steadily drifting on towards the 
distinct assertion of separate sovereignty, and had declared it 



THE GREAT DECLARATION. 267 

irreconcilable with reason and a good conscience for the colo- 
nists to take the oaths required for the support of the govern- 
ment under the crown of Great Britain. But it was not till 
the 7th of June that Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, rose 
and read these resolutions : 

" That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and inde- 
pendent States ; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British 
Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great 
Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved. 

" That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for 
forming foreign alliances. 

" That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respec- 
tive colonies for their consideration and approbation." 

These resolutions were presented under direct instructions 
from the Virginia Assembly, the delegates from that colony 
selecting Mr. Lee as their spokesman. They were at once sec- 
onded, probably after previous understanding, by John Adams, 
of Massachusetts — Virginia and Massachusetts being then the 
leading colonies. It was a bold act, for it was still doubtful 
whether anything better than a degrading death would await 
these leaders if unsuccessful. Gage had written, only the 
year before, of the prisoners left in his hands at Bunker Hill, 
that " their lives were destined to the cord." Indeed the story 
runs that a similar threat was almost as frankly made to the 
son of Mr. Lee, then a school-boy in England. He was one 
day standing near one of his teachers, when some visitor asked 
the question : " What boy is that T' " He is the son of Rich- 
ard Henry Lee, of America," the teacher replied. On this 
the visitor put his hand on the boy's head and said, " We shall 
yet see your father's head upon Tower Hill " — to which the 
boy answered, " You may have it when you can get it." This 
was the way in which the danger was regarded in England ; 
and we know that Congress directed the secretary to omit 
from the journals the names of the mover and seconder of 
these resolutions. The record only says, " Certain resolutions 



268 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

respecting independence being moved and seconded, Resolved, 
That the consideration of them be deferred until to-morrow 
morning ; and that the members be enjoined to attend punctu- 
ally at ten o'clock, in order to take the same into their con- 
sideration." 

On the next day the discussion came up promptly, and was 
continued through Saturday, June 8th, and on Monclay, June 
loth. The resolutions were opposed, even with bitterness, by 
Robert Livingston, of New York, by Dickinson and Wilson, 
of Pennsylvania, and by Rutledge, of South Carolina. The 
latter is reported to have said privately, " that it required the 
impudence of a New-Englander for them in their disjointed 
state to propose a treaty to a nation now at peace ; that no 
reason could be assigned for pressing into this measure but 
the reason of every madman, a show of spirit." On the other 
hand, the impudence, if such it was, of John Adams, went so 
far as to defend the resolutions, as stating " objects of the most 
stupendous magnitude, in which the lives and liberties of mill- 
ions yet unborn were intimately interested ;" as belonging to 
" a revolution the most complete, unexpected, and remarkable 
of any in the history of nations." On Monday the resolutions 
were postponed, by a vote of seven colonies against five, until 
that day three weeks; and it was afterwards voted (June nth), 
" in the mean while, that no time be lost, in case Congress agree 
thereto, that a committee be appointed to prepare a declaration 
to that effect." Of this committee Mr. Lee would doubtless 
have been the chairman, had he not been already on his way 
to Virginia, to attend the sick-bed of his wife. His associate, 
Thomas Jefferson, was named in his place, together with John 
Adams, of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin, of Pennsylvania, 
Roger Sherman, of Connecticut, and Robert R. Livingston, of 
New York. 

This provided for the Declaration ; and on the appointed 
day, July i, 1776, Congress proceeded to the discussion of the 



THE GREAT DECLARATION. 269 

momentous resolutions. Little remains to us of the debate, and 
the best glimpse of the opening situation is afforded to the 
modern reader through a letter written by Mr. Adams to Mercy 
Warren, the historian — a letter dated " Quincy, 1807," but not 
printed until within a few years, when it was inserted by Mr. 
Frothingham in the appendix to his invaluable " Rise of the 
Republic of the United States." The important passage is as 
follows : 

" I remember very well what I did say; but I will previously state a fact as 
it lies in my memory, which may be somewhat explanatory of it. In the pre- 
vious multiplied debates which we had upon the subject of independence, the 
delegates from New Jersey had voted against us ; their constituents were in- 
formed of it and recalled them, and sent us a new set on purpose to vote for 
independence. Among these were Chief-justice Stockton and Dr. Witherspoon. 
In a morning when Congress met, we expected the question would be put and 
carried without any further debate ; because we knew we had a majority, and 
thought that argument had been exhausted on both sides, as indeed it was, for 
nothing new was ever afterwards advanced on either side. But the Jersey dele- 
gates, appearing for the first time, desired that the question might be discussed. 
We observed to them that the question was so public, and had been so long 
discussed in pamphlets, newspapers, and at every fireside, that they could not 
be uninformed, and must have made up their minds. They said it was true 
they had not been inattentive to what had been passing abroad, but they had 
not heard the arguments in Congress, and did not incline to give their opinions 
until they should hear the sentiments of members there. Judge Stockton was 
most particularly importunate, till the members began to say, ' Let the gentle- 
men be gratified,' and the eyes of the assembly were turned upon me, and sev- 
eral of them said, ' Come, Mr. Adams ; you have had the subject longer at 
heart than any of us, and you must recapitulate the arguments.' I was some- 
what confused at this personal application to me, and would have been very 
glad to be excused ; but as no other person rose, after some time I said, ' This 
is the first time in my life when I seriously wished for the genius and eloquence 
of the celebrated orators of Athens and Rome : called in this unexpected and 
unprepared manner to exhibit all the arguments in favor of a measure the most 
important, in my judgment, that had ever been discussed in civil or political so- 
ciety, I had no art or oratory to exhibit, and could produce nothing but simple 
reason and plain common-sense. I felt myself oppressed by the weight of the 
subject, and I believed if Demosthenes or Cicero had ever been called to de- 
liberate on so great a question, neither would have relied on his own talents 
without a supplication to Minerva, and a sacrifice to Mercury or the God of 
Eloquence.' All this, to be sure, was but a flourish, and not, as I conceive, a 
very bright exordium ; but I felt awkwardly. . . . 



270 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



" I wish some one had remembered the speech, for it is ahnost the only one 
I ever made that I wish was literally preserved." 

"John Adams," said Jefferson, long afterwards, to Mr. Web- 
ster and Mr. Ticknor, " was our Colossus on the floor. He was 
not graceful, nor elegant, nor remarkably fluent, but he came 
out occasionally with a power of thought and expression that 

moved us from our seats." 
It seems a pity that no 
adequate specimens re- 
main to us of this straio'ht- 
forward eloquence ; and 
yet it ' is cause for con- 
gratulation, on the whole, 
that the only speech fully 
written out after that de- 
bate was the leadino^ ar- 
gument for the negative. 
Long years have made 
us familiar with the con- 
siderations that led to 
national independence ; 
JOHN DICKINSON. thc thlug of intcrcst is 

to know what was said 
against it; and this is just what we happen to know through 
the record of a single speech. 

After any great measure has been carried through, men 
speedily forget the objections and the objectors, and in a hun- 
dred years can hardly believe that any serious opposition was 
ever made. How utterly has the name of John Dickinson 
passed into oblivion! and yet, up to the year 1776, he had 
doubtless contributed more than any one man, except Thomas 
Paine, to the political emancipation, so far as the press could 
effect it, of the American people. The " Farmer's Letters " had 
been reprinted in London with a preface by Dr. Franklin ; 




THE GREAT DECLARATION. 



2^1 



they had been translated into French, and they had been more 
widely read in America than any patriotic pamphlet, excepting 
only the " Common Sense " of Paine. Now their author is for- 
gotten — except through the college he founded — because he 
shrunk at the last moment before the storm he had aroused. 
Who can deny the attribute of moral courage to the man who 
stood up in the Continental Congress to argue against inde- 
pendence? But John Adams reports that Dickinsons mother 
used to say to him: "Johnny, you will be hanged; your estate 
will be forfeited or confiscated ; you will leave your excellent 
wife a widow," and so on ; and Adams admits that if his wife 
and mother had held such language, it would have made him 
miserable at least. And it was under this restraininor influence, 
so unlike the fearless counsels of Abby Adams, that Dickin- 
son rose on that first of July, and spoke thus: 

" I value the love of my country as I ought, but I value my country more ; 
and I desire this illustrious assembly to witness the integrity, if not the policy, 
of my conduct. The first campaign will be decisive of the controversy. The 
Declaration will not strengthen us by one man, or by the least supply, while it 
may expose our soldiers to additional cruelties and outrages. Without some 
prelusory trials of our strength, we ought not to commit our country upon an 
alternative, where to recede would be infamy, and to persist might be destruc- 
tion. 

" No instance is recollected of a people without a battle fought, or an ally 
gained, abrogating forever their connection with a warlike commercial empire. 
It might unite the different parties in Great Britain against us, and it might 
create disunion among ourselves. 

" With other powers it would rather injure than avail us. Foreign aid will 
not be obtained but by our actions in the field, which are the only evidences of 
our union and vigor that will be respected. In the war between the United 
Provinces and Spain, France and England assisted the provinces before they 
declared themselves independent ; if it is the interest of any European kingdom 
to aid us, we shall be aided without such a declaration ; if it is not, we shall 
not be aided with it. Before such an irrevocable step shall be taken, we ought 
to know the disposition of the great powers, and how far they will permit one 
or more of them to interfere. The erection of an independent empire on this 
continent is a phenomenon in the world ; its effects will be immense, and may 
vibrate round the globe. How they may affect, or be supposed to affect, old 
establishments, is not ascertained. It is singularly disrespectful to France to 



■z/z 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



make the Declaration before her sense is known, as we have sent an agent ex- 
pressly to inquire whether such a Declaration would be acceptable to her, and 
we have reason to believe he is now arrived at the Court of Versailles, The 
measure ought to be delayed till the common interests shall in the best man- 
ner be consulted by common consent. Besides, the door to accommodation with 
Great Britain ought not to be shut, until we know what terms can be obtained 
from some competent power. Thus to break with her before we have com- 
pacted with another, is to make experiments on the lives and liberties of my 
countrymen, which I would sooner die than agree to make. At best, it is to 
throw us into the hands of some other power and to lie at mercy, for we shall 
have passed the river that is never to be repassed. We ought to retain the 
Declaration and remain masters of our own fame and fate." 

These were the opinions of the " Pennsylvania Farmer," as 
condensed by Bancroft from Mr. Dickinson's own report, no 
words being employed but those of the orator. In the field 
some of the bravest men were filled with similar anxieties. 
The letter, already quoted, from the new adjutant -general, 
Joseph Reed, describing the military situation, was not laid 
before the Congress, indeed, but one from General Washington, 
giving essentially the same facts, was read at the opening of 
that day's session. In spite of this mournful beginning, and 
notwithstanding the arguments of Mr. Dickinson, the purpose 
of the majority in the legislative body was clear and strong; 
and the pressure from their constituencies was yet stronger. 
Nearly every colony had already taken separate action towards 
independence, and on that first day of July the Continental 
Congress adopted, in committee, the first resolution offered by 
the Virginia delecjates. There were nine colonies in the affirm- 
ative, Pennsylvania and South Carolina voting in the negative, 
the latter unanimously, Delaware being divided, and New York 
not voting, the delegates from that colony favoring the meas- 
ure, but having as yet no instructions. 

When the resolutions came up for final action in conven- 
tion the next day, the state of things had changed. Dickinson 
and Morris, of Pennsylvania, had absented themselves and left 
an affirmative majority in the delegation; Cassar Rodney had 



THE GREAT DECLARATION. 273 

returned from an absence and brought Delaware into line; 
and South Carolina, though still disproving the resolutions, 
joined in the vote for the sake of unanimity, as had been half 
promised by Edward Rutledge the day before. Thus tw^elve 
colonies united in the momentous action ; and New York, 
though not voting, yet endorsed it through a State convention 
within a week. The best outburst of contemporary feeling 
over the great event is to be found in a letter by John Adams 
to his wife, dated July 3, 1776. He writes as follows: 

" Yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in 
America, and a greater, perhaps, never was nor will be decided among men. . . . 
When I look back to 1761, . . . and recollect the series of political events, the 
chain of causes and effects, I am surprised at the suddenness as well as great- 
ness of this revolution. Britain has been filled with folly, and America with 
wisdom. ... It is the will of Heaven that the two countries should be sundered 
forever. It may be the will of Heaven that America shall suffer calamities still 
more wasting, and distresses yet more dreadful. . . . But I submit all my hopes 
and fears to an overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable as the faith may 
be, I firmly believe. ... 

"The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch a in the 
history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding 
generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as 
the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty, . . . from 
one end of the continent to the other, from this time forward for evermore. 

'* You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well 
aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this 
declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet, through all the gloom, 
I can see the rays of ravishmg light and glory \ I can see that the end is worth 
all the means. And that posterity will triumph in that day's transaction, even 
though we should rue it, which I trust in God we shall not." 

John Adams was mistaken in one prediction. It is the 
Fourth of July, not the Second, which has been accepted by 
Americans as " the most memorable epocha." This is one of 
the many illustrations of the fact that words as well as deeds 
are needful, since a gr^t act may seem incomplete until it has 
been put into a fitting form of words. It was the vote of July 
2d that changed the thirteen colonies into independent States ; 
the Declaration of Independence only promulgated the fact and 

18 



274 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



assigned its reasons. Had this great proclamation turned out 
to be a confused or ill-written document, it would never have 
eclipsed in fame the original Resolution, which certainly had 
no such weak side. But this danger was well averted, for the 
Declaration was to be drawn up by Jefferson, unsurpassed in 
his time for power of expression. He accordingly framed it ; 
Franklin and Adams suggested a few verbal amendments ; 




HOUSE IN WHICH JEFFERSON WROTE THE DECLARATION, CORNER OF MARKET 
AND SEVENTH STREETS, PHILADELPHIA. 



Sherman and Livingston had none to offer ; and the document 
stood ready to be reported to the Congress. 

Some of those who visit Philadelphia may feel an interest 
in knowing that the " title - deed of our liberties," as Webster 
called it, was written in " a new brick house out in the fields " 
— a house still standing, at the south-west corner of Market 
and Seventh streets, less than a quarter of a mile from In- 
dependence Square. Jefferson had there rented a parlor and 



THE GREAT DECLARATION. 275 

bedroom, ready furnished, on the second floor, for thirty- five 
shilHngs a week ; and he wrote the Declaration in this parlor, 
upon a little writing-desk, three inches high, which still exists. 
In that modest room we may fancy Franklin and Adams listen- 
ing critically, Sherman and Livingston approvingly, to what was 
for them simply the report of a committee. Jefferson had writ- 
ten it, we are told, without the aid of a single book; he was 
merely putting into more systematic form a series of points long- 
familiar ; and Parton may be right in the opinion that the writer 
was not conscious of any very strenuous exercise of his faculties, 
or of any very eminent service done. 

Nothing is so difficult as to transport ourselves to the actual 
mood of mind in which great historic acts were performed, or 
in which their actors habitually dwelt. Thus, on the seventh 
day of that July, John Adams wrote to his wife a descrip- 
tion of the condition of our army, so thrilling and harrowing 
that it was, as he says, enough to fill one with horror. We 
fancy him spending that day in sackcloth and ashes ; but there 
follows on the same page another letter, written to the same 
wife on the same day — a long letter devoted solely to a dis- 
course on the varieties of English style, in which he urges 
upon her a careful reading of Rollin's " Belles-lettres " and the 
Epistles of Pliny the Younger. Yet any one who has ever 
taken part in difficult or dangerous actions can understand the 
immense relief derived from that half hour's relapse into " the 
still air of delightful studies." And it is probable that Jefferson 
and his companions, even while discussing the title-deed of our 
liberties, may have let their talk stray over a hundred collateral 
themes as remote from the immediate task as were Pliny and 
Rollin. 

During three days — the second, third, and fourth of July — 
the Declaration was debated in the Congress. The most vivid 
historic glimpse of that debate is in Franklin's consolatory an- 
ecdote, told to Jefferson, touching John Thompson, the hatter. 



276 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



The amendments adopted by Congress have always been ac- 
counted as improvements, because tending in the direction of 
conciseness and simplicity, though the loss of that stern condem- 
nation of the slave-trade — "a piratical warfare against human 




VIEW OF INDEPENDENCE HALL, THROUGH THE SQUARE. 



nature itself " — has always been regretted. The amended docu- 
rnent was finally adopted, like the Virginia resolution, by the 
vote of twelve colonies. New York still abstaining. If Thomas 
McKean's reminiscences at eighty can be trusted, it cost anoth- 
er effort to secure this strong vote, and Cccsar Rodney had again 



THE GREAT DECLARATION. 277 

to be sent for to secure the Delaware delegation. McKean 
says, in a letter written in 18 14 to John Adams, "I sent an, 
express for Caesar Rodney to Dover, in the county of Kent, in 
Delaware, at my private expense, whom I met at the State- 
house door on the 4th of July, in his boots; he resided eighty 
miles from the city, and just arrived as Congress met." Jeffer- 
son has, however, thrown much doubt over these octogenarian 
recollections by McKean, and thinks that he confounded the 
different votes together. There is little doubt that this hurried 
night-ride by Rodney was in preparation for the Second of July, 
not the Fourth, and that the vote on the Fourth went quietly 
through. 

But the Declaration, being adopted, was next to be signed ; 
and here again we come upon an equally great contradiction in 
testimony. This same Thomas McKean wrote in 18 14 to ex- 
President Adams, speaking of the Declaration of Independence, 
" No man signed it on that day" — namely, July 4, 1776. Jeffer- 
son, on the other hand, writing some years later, thought that 
Mr. McKean's memory had deceived him, Jefferson himself as- 
serting, from his early notes, that " the Declaration was reported 
by the Committee, agreed to by the House, and signed by every 
member present except Mr. Dickinson." But Jefferson, who 
was also an octogenarian, seems to have forgotten the subse- 
quent signing of the Declaration on parchment, until it was re- 
called to his memory, as he states, a few years later. If there 
was a previous signing of a written document, the manuscript 
itself has long since disappeared, and the accepted historic 
opinion is that both these venerable witnesses were mistaken ; 
that the original Declaration was signed only by the president 
and secretary, John Hancock and Charles Thomson, and that 
the general signing of the parchment copy took place on Au- 
gust 2d. It is probable, at least, that fifty-four of the fifty- 
six names were appended on that day, and that it was after- 
wards signed by Thornton, of New Hampshire, who was not 



278 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



then a member, and by McKean, who was then temporarily 
absent. 

Jefferson used to relate, " with much merriment," says Par- 
ton, that the final signing of the Declaration was hastened by a 
very trivial circumstance. Near the hall was a large stable, 
whence the flies issued in legions. Gentlemen were in those 
days peculiarly sensitive to such discomforts by reason of silk 




TABLE AND CHAIRS USED AT THE SIGNING OF THE DECLARATION. 



stockings ; and when this annoyance, superadded to the summer 
heat of Philadelphia, had become intolerable, they hastened to 
bring the business to a conclusion. This may equally well refer, 
however, to the original vote; flies are flies, whether in July or 



August. 



American tradition has clung to the phrases assigned to the 



THE GREAT DECLARATION. 279 

different participants in this scene : John Hancock's commen- 
tary on his own bold handwriting, " There, John Bull may read 
my name without spectacles ;" Franklin's, " We must hang to- 
gether, or else, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately ;" 
and the heavy Harrison's remark to the slender Elbridge Gerry, 
that in that event Gerry would be kicking in the air long after 
his own fate would be settled. These things may or may not 
have been said, but it gives a more human interest to the event 
when we know that they were even rumored. What we long to 
know is, that the great acts of history were done by men like 
ourselves, and not by dignified machines. 

This is the story of the signing. Of the members who 
took part in that silent drama of 1776, some came to greatness 
in consequence, becoming presidents, vice-presidents, govern- 
ors, chief -justices, or judges; others came, in equally direct 
consequence, to poverty, flight, or imprisonment. " Hunted 
like a fox by the enemy ;" " a prisoner twenty-four hours with- 
out food," " not daring to remain two successive nights beneath 
one shelter" — these are the records we may find in the annals 
of the Revolution in regard to 'many a man who stood by 
John Hancock on that summer day to sign his name. It is a 
pleasure to think that not one of them ever disgraced, publicly 
or conspicuously, the name he had written. Of the rejoicings 
which, everywhere throughout the colonies, followed the sign- 
ina:, the tale has been often told. It has been told so often, 
if the truth must be confessed, that it is not now easy to dis- 
tinguish the romance from the simple fact. The local anti- 
quarians of Philadelphia bid us dismiss forever from the record 
the picturesque old bell-ringer and his eager boy, waiting 
breathlessly to announce to the assembled thousands the final 
vote of Congress on the Declaration. The tale is declared to 
be a pure fiction, of which there exists not even a local tradi- 
tion. The sessions of Congress were then secret, and there 
was no expectant crowd outside. It was not till the fifth of 



28o 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



July that Congress sent 
out circulars announc- 
ing the Declaration ; not 
till the sixth that it ap- 
peared in a Philadelphia 
newspaper; and not till 
the eighth that it was 
read by John Nixon in 
the yard of Indepen- 
dence Hall. It was read 
from, an observatory 
there erected by the 
American Philosophical 
Society, seven years 
before, to observe the 
transit of Venus. The 




TEARING DOWN THE KING'S ARMS FROM ABOVE THE DOOR IN THE CHAMBER OF 
THE SUPREME COURT ROOM IN INDEPENDENCE HALL, JULY 8, 1 776. 



THE GREAT DECLARATION. 



281 



king's arms over the door of the Supreme Court room in Inde- 
pendence Hall were torn down by a committee of the Volun- 
teer force called " associators ;" these trophies were burned in 
the evening, in the presence of a great crowd of citizens, and 
no doubt amid the joyful pealing of the old "Independence" 
bell. There is also a tradition that on the afternoon of that 
day, or possibly a day or two earlier, there was a joyful private 




GARDEN-HOUSE, OWNED BY DR. ENOCH EDWARDS, WHERE JEFFERSON AND OTHERS 
CELEBRATED THE PASSAGE OF THE DECLARATION. 



celebration of the great event, by Jefferson and others, at the 
garden-house of a country-seat in Frankford (near Philadelphia), 
then occupied by Dr. Enoch Edwards, a leading patriot of that 
time. 

It is certain that a portion of the signers of the Declara- 
tion met two years after, for a cheery commemoration of their 
great achievement, in the Philadelphia City Tavern. The en- 
joyment of the occasion was enhanced by the recent deliver- 
ance of the city from the presence of General Howe, and by 
the contrast between this festival and that lately given by the 



282 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

British officers to him, known in history as the " Meschianza." 
This chapter may well close with a passage from the manu- 
script diaries of William Ellery, now lying before me. 

"On the glorious Fourth of July [1778], I celebrated in the City Tavern, 
with my brother delegates of Congress and a number of other gentlemen, 
amounting, in the whole, to about eighty, the anniversary of Independency. 
The entertainment was elegant and well conducted. There were four tables 
spread ; two of them extended the whole length of the room, the other two 
crossed them at right angles. At the end of the room, opposite the upper 
table, was erected an Orchestra. At the head of the upper table, and at the 
President's right hand, stood a large baked pudding, in the centre of which 
was planted a staff, on which was displayed a crimson flag, in the midst of 
which was this emblematic device : An eye, denoting Providence ; a label, on 
which was inscribed, ' An appeal to Heaven ;' a man with a drawn sword in his 
hand, and in the other the Declaration of Independency, and at his feet a scroll 
inscribed, 'The declaratory acts.' As soon as the dinner began, the music, 
consisting of clarionets, hautboys, French horns, violins, and bass-viols, opened 
and continued, making proper pauses, until it was finished. Then the toasts, 
followed by a discharge of field-pieces, were drank, and so the afternoon ended. 
In the evening there was a cold collation and a brilliant exhibition of fire- 
works. The street was crowded with people during the exhibition. . . . 

" What a strange vicissitude in human affairs ! These, but a few years 
since colonies of Great Britain, are now free, sovereign, and independent States, 
and now celebrate the anniversary of their independence in the very city where, 
but a day or two before. General Howe exhibited his ridiculous Champhaitre.'''' 



XII. 

THE BIRTH OF A NATION. 

MY lords," said the Bishop of St. Asaph's, in the British 
House of Lords, " I look upon North America as the 
only great nursery of freedom left upon the face of the earth." 
It is the growth of freedom in this nursery which really inter- 
ests us most in the Revolutionary period; all the details of 
battles are quite secondary. Indeed, in any general view of the 
history of a nation, the steps by which it gets into a war and 
finally gets out again are of more importance than all that lies 
between. No doubt every skirmish in a prolonged contest has 
its bearing on national character, but it were to consider too 
curiously to dwell on this, and most of the continuous incident 
of a war belongs simply to military history. If this is always 
the case, it is peculiarly true of the war of American Indepen- 
dence, which exhibited, as was said by the ardent young French- 
man, Lafayette, " the grandest of causes won by contests of sen- 
tinels and outposts." 

The Declaration of Independence was publicly read through- 
out the colonies, and was communicated by Washington in a 
general order, July 9, 1776, with the following announcement: 
" The general hopes this important event will serve as an in- 
centive to every officer and soldier to act with fidelity and cour- 
age, as knowing that now the peace and safety of his country 
depend (under God) solely on the success of our arms ; and that 
he is now in the service of a State possessed of sufficient power 
to reward his merit and advance him to the highest honors of 



284 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

a free countiy." Thus early did this far-seeing Virginian give 
his allegiance to the new government as a nation, — terming it 
" a State," " a free country ;" not an agglomeration of States 
only, or a temporary league of free countries. And he needed 
for his encouragement all the strength he could gain from this 
new-born loyalty. 

It was a gloomy and arduous year, the year 1776. The first 
duty now assigned to Washington was that of sustaining him- 
self on Long Island and guarding New York. Long Island 
was the scene of terrible disaster; the forces under Putnam 
were hemmed in and cut to pieces (August 27th), making- 
Greenwood Cemetery a scene of death before it was a place of 
burial. . In this fatal battle 8000 Americans, still raw and under 
a raw commander (Putnam), were opposed to 20,000 trained 
Hessian soldiers, supported by a powerful fleet. Washington 
decided to retreat from Long Island. With extraordinary 
promptness and energy he collected in a few hours, from a 
range of fourteen miles, a sufficient supply of boats — this being 
done in such secrecy that even his aides did not know it. For 
forty-eight hours he did not sleep, being nearly the whole time 
in the saddle. He sent 9000 men, with all their baggage and 
field artillery, across a rapid river nearly a mile wide, within 
hearing of the enemy's camp : " the best conducted retreat I 
ever read of," wrote General Greene. Then began desertions, 
by companies and almost by regiments. They continued dur- 
ing all his memorable retreat through the Jerseys, when his 
troops were barefooted and disheartened, and yet he contested 
every inch of ground. At the beginning of his march he heard 
of the loss of Fort' Washington (November i6th) with 2600 
men, their ordnance, ammunition, and stores. The day before 
he crossed the Delaware the British took possession of New- 
port, Rhode Island, signalling their arrival by burning the house 
of William Ellery, who had signed the great Declaration. 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION. 285 

Yet amid all these accumulated disasters Washington wrote 

O 

to Congress that he could see " without despondency even for 
a moment " what America called her " gloomy hours." He 
could breathe more freely at last when, on December 8th, he 
crossed the Delaware at Trenton with what the discourao-ed 
Reed had called " the wretched fragments of a broken army," 
now diminished to 3000 men. As his last boat crossed, the 
advanced guard of Howe's army reached the river, and looked 
eagerly for means of transportation. Washington had seized 
everything that could float upon the water within seventy 
miles. 

On December 20, 1776, Washington told John Hancock, then 
President of the Congress, " Ten days more will put an end to 
the existence of our army." Yet at Christmas he surprised the 
Hessians at Trenton, recrossing the river and returning on his 
course with what was perhaps the most brilliant single stroke of 
war that he ever achieved. A few days later (January 3, 1 777) he 
defeated Cornwallis at Princeton with almost equal ability ; and 
all this he did with but 5000 men, one-half militia, the rest little 
more. During that year there had been in service 47,000 " Con- 
tinentals " and 27,000 militia. Where were they all.? These 
large figures had only been obtained through that system of 
short enlistments against which Washington had in vain pro- 
tested — enlistments for three months, or even for one month. 
It is useless for this generation to exclaim against what may 
seem slowness or imbecility in the government of that day. 
Why, we ask, did they not foresee what the war would be } 
why did they not insist on longer enlistments } We have seen 
in our own time the uselessness of these questionings. Under 
popular institutions it is hard to convince a nation that a long 
war is before it; it is apt to be easily persuaded that peace will 
return in about sixty days ; its strength is seen, if at all, in its 
reserved power and its final resources. The dawn of indepen- 
dence seemed overcast indeed when the campaign of 1776 



286 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

closed, and Washington, with only three or four thousand men, 
went sadly into winter-quarters at Morristown. 

In April, 1777, John Adams wrote proudly to his wife, 
" Two complete years we have maintained open war with Great 
Britain and her allies, and, after all our difhculties and misfort- 
unes, are much abler to cope with them now than we were at 
the beginning." The year that followed was in many respects 
the turning-point of the Revolution. The British had formed 
a plan which, had it been carried out, might have resulted in a 
complete triumph for them. It was a project to take thorough 
possession of the whole line of the Hudson-;-Burgoyne coming 
down from the North, Heath going up from the South — thus 
absolutely cutting the colonies in two, separating New England 
from the rest, and conquering each by itself. Happily this was 
abandoned for a measure that had no valuable results, the pos- 
session of Philadelphia. It is true that in the effort to save 
that city, Washington sustained defeat at Brandywine (Septem- 
ber II, 1777), and only came near victory, without achieving it, 
at Germantown (October 4th). But the occupation of Philadel- 
phia divided the British army — now nearly fifty thousand sol- 
diers — while the American army, though it had shrunk to about 
half that number, remained more concentrated. Moreover, the 
luxurious winter in Philadelphia did the invading troops little 
good ; while the terrible winter at Valley Forge was in one 
sense the saving of the Americans. There they came under 
the influence of trained foreign ofhcers — Pulaski and Steuben, 
as well as the young Lafayette. Baron Steuben especially took 
the hungry soldiers and taught them what drill meant. Hereto- 
fore there had been a different drill for almost every regiment 
— a whole regiment numbering sometimes but thirty men — and 
many of these retained the practice learned in Indian warfare, 
of marching in single file. 

Meanwhile at the North there occurred successes for the 
American army, which grew directly out of the abandonment 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION. 287 

of the British plan. Stark with New England troops defeated 
a detachment of Burgoyne s army near Bennington ; and Gates 
took the whole of that army — five thousand men — prisoners at 
Saratoga, October 17, 1777. It seemed for the moment that 
this determined the fate of the war. That surrender is the only 
American battle included by Sir Edward Creasy in his " Fifteen 
Decisive Battles of the World," and yet for six years its deci- 
siveness did not prove final and the war went on. Those who 
remember the sort of subdued and sullen hopefulness which 
prevailed, year in and year out, in the Northern States, during 
the late war for the Union, can probably conceive something of 
the mood in which the American people saw months and years 
go by during the Revolution without any very marked progress, 
and yet with an indestructible feeling that somehow the end 
must come. But the surrender of Burgoyne at least turned the 
scale in favor of the Americans, so far as the judgment of Eu- 
rope was concerned. When the French minister, Vergennes, 
declared that " All efforts, however great, would be powerless to 
reduce a people so thoroughly determined to refuse submission," 
the alliance was a foregone conclusion. Dr. Franklin, with in- 
exhaustible and wily good-nature, was always pressing upon the 
French ministry this same view, and the influence of Lafayette 
seconded it. Nations like to form alliances on the side that 
seems to be winning. Yet not even the French government 
wished to have the new nation too powerful ; and Mr. John Jay 
has conclusively shown that Vergennes would have left the 
United States a very hampered and restricted nationality had 
not the vigor of Jay, well seconded by Adams, added, at a later 
period, an element of positive self-assertion beyond the good- 
nature of Franklin. Meanwhile, the first treaty with France — 
which was also the first treaty of the United States with any 
foreign government — was signed February 6, 177S, two months 
after the news of Burgoyne's surrender had reached Paris. 

However high we rate the value of the French help, we must 



288 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

remember that the alliance united England against the two na- 
tions. There were many who were by this time convinced that 
the work of conquest was hopeless. " The time may come," said 
the King to Lord North, in 1778, "when it will be wise to aban- 
don all North America but Canada, Nova Scotia, and the Flor- 
idas ; but then the generality of the nation must first see it in 
that light." If there is anything that is impressed upon the 
very school-books in connection with that period it is the obsti- 
nacy of King George III., and yet he had learned thus much. 
On the other hand, Lord Chatham, who had once said, " Amer- 
ica has resisted ; I rejoice, my lords," was now driven by the 
French alliance to take sides against America. He saw in the 
proposed independence only the degradation of the power of 
England before the French throne, and was carried from a sick- 
bed to speak against it in Parliament (April 7, 1778), "My 
lords," he said, " I rejoice that the grave has not closed upon 
me, that I am still alive to uplift my voice against the dismem- 
berment of this ancient and most noble monarchy." As the 
Duke of Richmond essayed to answer, Chatham was seized with 
apoplexy, and was borne from the House to die. The young 
American government had gained a powerful alliance, but it 
had lost its best English friend. Richmond, Burke, and Fox 
supported its cause, but Chatham had roused the traditional 
pride of England against France, and Lord North was his suc- 
cessor. Then followed a period of which Washington wrote to 
George Mason (March 27, 1779) that he was for the first time 
despondent, and had beheld no day in which he thought the 
liberties of America so endangered. The war must still go on, 
and the French army and navy must cross the Atlantic for its 
prosecution. They were cordially welcomed by everybody ex- 
cept the German settlers of New York and Pennsylvania, who 
could not forget, as Mrs. Quincy's journal tells us, the excesses 
committed by the French troops in Germany. 

The direct service done by the French alliance was of less 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION. 289 

value than the moral support it brought. It occupied Newport, 
Rhode Island, in July, 1780, with nearly six thousand men in 
army and navy. The unpublished memorials of that time and 
place contain many delightful recollections of the charming man- 
ners of the French officers : of the Rochambeaux, father and 
son ; of the Due de Deux-Ponts, afterwards King of Bavaria ; 
of the Prince de Broglie, guillotined in the Revolution ; of the 
Swedish Count Fersen, " the Adonis of the camp," who after- 
wards acted as coachman for the French king and queen in 
their escape from Paris; of the Vicomte de Noailles and of 
Admiral de Ternay, the latter buried in Trinity Church yard 
in Newport. There are old houses in that city which still re- 
tain upon their window-panes the gallant inscriptions of those 
picturesque days, and there are old letters and manuscripts that 
portray their glories. One that lies before me describes the 
young noblemen driving into the country upon parties of pleas- 
ure, preceded by their running footmen — a survival of feudalism 
— tall youths in kid slippers and with leaping poles ; another 
describes the reception of Washington by the whole French 
garrison, in March, 1781. It was a brilliant scene. The four 
French regiments were known as Bourbonnais, Soissonnais, 
Deux- Fonts, and Saintonge ; they contained each a thousand 
men; and the cavalry troop, under De Lauzun, was almost as 
large. Some of these wore white uniforms, with yellow or vio- 
let or crimson lapels, and with black gaiters ; others had a uni- 
form of black and gold, with gaiters of snowy white. The offi- 
cers displayed stars and badges ; even the officers' servants were 
gay in gold and silver lace. Over them all and over the whole 
town floated the white flas^ of the Bourbons with the fleurs-de- 
lis. They were drawn up in open ranks along the avenue lead- 
ing to the long wharf, which was just then losing its picturesque 
old name. Queen's Hithe. This gay army, whose fresh uniforms 
and appointments contrasted strangely with the worn and dilap- 
idated aspect of the Continental troops, received Washington 

19 



290 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



'^'^^Sj.^^^^^^-^illSS 




THE FRENCH OFFICERS AT NEWPORT. 



with the honors due to a marshal of France. In the evenino; 
a ball was given to the American generals ; Washington opened 
the dance with the beautiful Miss Champlin : he chose for 
the figure the country -dance known as "A Successful Cam- 
paign," and, as he danced, the French officers took the instru- 
ments from the musicians, and themselves played the air and 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION. 29 1 

accompaniment. Thus with characteristic graces began the 
French occupation of Newport, and it continued to be for them 
rather a hohday campaign, until the siege of Yorktown, Virginia, 
proved the cfuahties of their engineers and their soldiers. After 
ten days of siege, the British army, overwhelmed and surround- 
ed, had to surrender at last (October 19, 1781); and in the great 
painting which represents the scene, at the Versailles palace, 
General de Rochambeau is made the conspicuous figure, while 
Washington is quite secondary. 

Meanwhile the successes of Paul Tones in sea-fro-htincj orained 
still more the respect of Europe, and his victorious fight of three 
hours in the Boiikomme Richard 2ig2im^t the Serapis (1779) — the 
two ships being lashed side by side — was the earliest naval victo- 
ry gained under the present American flag, which this bold sea- 
captain was the first to unfurl. Then the skilful campaigns of 
General Nathaniel Greene (1780) rescued the Carolinas from in- 
vasion ; and the treason of Benedict Arnold, with his plan for sur- 
rendering to the British the "American Gibraltar" — West Point 
— created a public excitement only deepened by the melancholy 
death of Major Andre, who was hanged as a spy, Sept. 23, 1780. 
For nearly two years after the surrender of Cornwallis the British 
troops held the cities of New York, Charleston, and Savannah ; 
and though they were powerless beyond those cities, yet it seem- 
ed to their garrisons, no doubt, that the war was not yet ended. 
Mrs. Josiah Ouincy, visiting New York as a child, just before 
its evacuation by the British under Sir Guy Carleton, in i 783, 
says that she accompanied her mother, Mrs. Morton, to call on 
the wife of Chief-justice Smith, an eminent loyalist. Their host- 
ess brought in a little girl, and said, " This child has been born 
since the Rebellion." "Since the Revolution.'^" replied Mrs. Mor- 
ton. Mrs. Smith smiled, and said good-naturedly, " Well, well, Mrs. 
Morton, this is only a truce, not a peace ; and we shall be back 
again in full possession in two years." " This prophecy happily 
did not prove true," adds Mrs. Quincy, with exultant patriotism. 



292 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



Independence was essentially secured by the preliminary ar- 
ticles signed in Paris on Jan. 20, 1783, although the final treaty 
was not signed till Sept. 3d. It was on April 18, 1783, that 
Washington issued his order for the cessation of hostilities, thus 
completing, as he said, the eighth year of the war. The army 
was disbanded Nov. 3d. The whole number of " Continentals," 




/- 



^■^ 




GENERAL SIR GUY CARLETON. 



or regular troops, employed during the contest was 231,791. Of 
these Massachusetts had furnished 67,907, Connecticut 31,939, 
Virginia 26,678, Pennsylvania 25,678, and the other States 
smaller numbers, down to 2679 from Georgia. The expendi- 
tures of the war, as officially estimated in 1790, were nearly a 
hundred million dollars in specie ($92,485,693.15), and the debts. 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION. 293 

foreign expenditures, etc., swelled this to more than one hundred 
and thirty-five millions ($135,693,703). At the close, the army, 
which had been again and again on the verge of mutiny from 
neglect and privation, received pay for three months in six 
months' notes, which commanded in the market the price of two 
shillings for twenty shillings. The soldiers reached their homes, 
as Washington wrote to Congress, "without a settlement of their 
accounts, and without a farthing of money in their pockets." 

Independence being thus achieved, what was to be done 
with it ? Those who represented the nation in Congress, while 
generally agreed in patriotic feeling, were not agreed even on 
the fundamental principles of government. The Swiss Zubly, 
who represented Georgia, and who claimed to have been famil- 
iar with republican government ever since he was six years old, 
declared that it was " little better than a government of devils." 
John Adams heartily favored what he called republican govern- 
ment, but we know, from a letter of his to Samuel Adams (Oc- 
tober 18, 1790), that he meant by it something very remote from 
our present meaning. Like many other men of modest origin, 
he had a strong love for social distinctions ; he noted with sat- 
isfaction that there was already the semblance of an aristocracy 
in Boston ; and he, moreover, held that the republican forms of 
Poland and Venice were worse, and the Dutch and Swiss repub- 
lics but little better, than the old regime in France, whose abuses 
led to the Revolution. The republic of Milton, he thought, 
would imply " miseries," and the simple monarchical form would 
be better. He meant by republic, he said, simply a government 
in which " the people have collectively or by representation an 
essential share in the sovereignty " — such a share, for instance,, 
as they have in England. This being the case, it is not strange 
that he should have regarded independence itself as but a tem- 
porary measure, a sort of protest, and should have looked for- 
ward without dismay to an ultimate reunion with England, un- 
der certain guarantees to be secured by treaty. 



294 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

It is very fortunate that the institutions of America were 
not to depend on the speculations of any one man, even the 
wisest. Many persons think of the organization of the United 
States as being the work of a few leaders. Had this been the 
truth, the Continental government would have been organized 
first, and the State governments would have been built after- 
wards on its model. As a matter-of-fact, it was just the other 
way. While the great leaders were debating in Congress or 
negotiating in Europe, the question of government was settled 
by the reorganization of successive colonies into common- 
wealths, the work being done largely by men now forgotten. 
These men took the English tradition of local self-government, 
adapted it to the new situation, and adjusted it to a community 
in which kings and noblemen had already begun to fade into 
insignificance. 

Even before independence was declared, some of the colo- 
nies — Massachusetts, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Virginia, 
and New Jersey — had begun to frame State governments on 
the basis of the old charter governments, but so hastily that 
their work needed in some cases to be revised. After the 
declaration, New York and Maryland followed soon, and then 
the rest. We find Jefferson writing to Franklin (August 13, 
1777) that in Virginia "the people seem to have laid aside the 
monarchical and taken up the republican government with as 
much ease as would have attended their throwing off an old 
and putting on a new suit of clothes." All these common- 
wealths agreed, almost without consultation, on certain princi- 
ples. All recognized the sovereignty of the people, or at least 
the masculine half of the people; all wished to separate Church 
and State ; all distinguished, as did the unwritten constitution 
of England, between the executive, the judicial, and the legis- 
lative departments ; all limited the executive department very 
carefully, as experience had taught them to do. Nowhere, ex- 
cept in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, was there any recogni- 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION. 295 

tion of the hereditary right to vote, this being in Rhode Island 
included in the royal charter under which that State governed 
itself, omitting only the part of royalty, till 1842. In short, all 
the scattered colonies shifted what had seemed the very basis 
of their structure, and yet found themselves, after all, in good 
condition. We have grown accustomed in these days to the 
readiness with which English-speaking men can settle down 
anywhere on the planet and presently organize free institutions ; 
so that we hardly recognize what a wonder it seemed that thir- 
teen colonies, even while engaged in a great war, should one by 
one quietly crystallize into shape. 

The great diflficulty was to unite these little commonwealths 
into a nation. It took one unsuccessful experiment to teach 
the way of success, and it is astonishing that it did not take 
a dozen. It was a strange period. The war had unsettled 
men's minds, as is done by all great wars. It had annihilated 
all loyalty to the king, but it had done much more than this. 
It had made the rich poor, and the poor rich ; had filled the 
nation with almost irredeemable paper- money; had created a 
large class whose only hope was to evade payment of their 
debts. " Oh, Mr. Adams," said John Adams's horse-jockey cli- 
ent, " what great things have you and your colleagues done for 
us ! We can never be grateful enough to you. There are no 
courts of justice now in this province, and I hope there never 
will be another." 

The first experiment at national union was the Confedera- 
tion. It was based essentially on a theory of Jefferson's. This 
theory was to make " the States one as to everything connected 
with foreign nations, and several as to everything purely domes- 
tic." For purposes of foreign commerce a Confederation must 
exist. To this all finally agreed, though with much, reluctance. 
Indeed the original apostles of this theory did not much believe 
in any such commerce. Jefferson wrote from Paris (in 1785) that 
if he had his way " the States should practise neither commerce 



296 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

nor navigation," but should " stand with respect to Europe pre- 
cisely on the footing of China." But he admitted that he could 
not have his way, and wrote to Monroe (December 11, 1785) 
from Paris: "On this side of the Atlantic we are viewed as 
objects of commerce only." Granting thus much, then, to be 
inevitable, how was little Rhode Island or Delaware to resist 
the aggressions of any European bully, or of those Algerine or 
Tripolitan pirates who then bullied even the bullies themselves.'* 
For this purpose, at least, there must be some joint action. 
How could the United States treat with any foreign govern- 
ment when, as Washington said (in 1785), they were "one na- 
tion to-day and thirteen to-morrow.'*" They must therefore 
unite sufficiently to make a treaty and enforce it, but no further. 
In other words, they undertook to build a house which should 
have an outside but no inside. 

The Confederation was originally put in shape through a 
committee appointed by Congress, June 11, 1776, "to prepare 
and digest the form of a confederation to be entered into be- 
tween these colonies." But the " articles " thus prepared were 
not accepted by Congress till November 15, 1777, and they had 
been much modified before they received the assent of the last 
of the States, on March i, 1781. During all this time the af- 
fairs of the war were carried on loosely enough by Congress — 
still a single House — which had come to be familiarly known 
among the people as " King Cong." But this king had abso- 
lutely no power but in the impulsive support of the people. It 
was a thankless office to sit in Congress ; the best men were 
more and more reluctant to serve there. To reach it, wherever 
it sat — Philadelphia, Baltimore, Lancaster, York, Princeton, or 
Annapolis — was to most of the members far more of a journey 
than to reach San Francisco or London from Philadelphia or 
Annapolis to-day. Inasmuch as all votes were taken by States 
— and every State had an equal vote, so long as there was one 
man to represent it — there was a strong temptation for delegates 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION. 297 

to absent themselves ; and a single member from Delaware or 
Rhode Island could, if present, balance the whole representa- 
tion from New York or Virginia. " It is enough to sicken one," 
wrote General Knox to Washington, in March, 1783, "to ob- 
serve how light a matter many States make of their not being 
represented in Congress — a good proof of the badness of the 
present Constitution." Even on the great occasion when the 
resignation of Washington was to be received, there were pres- 
ent only twenty members, representing but seven of the colonies. 
" It is difficult," wrote M. Otto to the French government, " to 
assemble seven States, which form the number required to trans- 
act the least important business ;" and he wrote again, a few 
months after, that the secret of the predominant influence of 
Massachusetts in the Congress w^as that she usually kept four 
or five able delegates there, while other States rarely had two. 
As we read the records we can only wonder that the organiza- 
tion did its work so well ; and it is not at all strange that, as 
the same General Knox wrote to Washington, the favorite toasts 
in the army were, " Cement to the Union " and " A hoop to the 
barrel." 

There were those who believed that nothing but the actual 
necessities of another war could really unite the colonies, and 
some patriots frankly wished for that calamity. M. Otto, writ- 
ing home in December, 1785, to M. De Vergennes, declared 
that Mr. Jay was the most influential man in Congress, and that 
Mr. Jay had lately expressed in his hearing a wish that the 
Algerine pirates, then so formidable, would burn some of the 
maritime towns of the United States, in order to reunite the 
nation and call back the old feeling. " The majority of Con- 
gress perceive very clearly," he wrote, " that war would serve as 
a bond to the Confederation, but they cannot conceal the lack 
of means which they possess to carry it on with advantage." 

This desperate remedy being out of the question, the " hoop 
to the barrel " must be put on by some more peaceful method. 



298 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Yet each way had its own perplexities. There were jealousies 
of lono- standino; between North and South, between the colo- 
nies which were ready to abolish slavery and those which clung 
to it. Then the course of the Confederation had only increased 
the mutual distrust between the small and the large States. 
There were objections to a permanent president ; some would 
have preferred, as a very few would still prefer, to have a sys- 
tem like that now prevailing in the Swiss Confederation, and to 
place at the head merely the chairman of a committee. Again, 
there existed a variety of opinions as to a Legislature of one 
or two Houses. It is said that when Jeffe^'son returned from 
France he was breakfasting with Washington, and asked him 
why he agreed to a Senate. 

"Why," said Washington, "did you just now pour that cof- 
fee into your saucer before drinking it ?" " To cool it," said 
Jefferson ; " my throat is not made of brass." " Even so," said 
Washington, " we pour our legislation into the Senatorial saucer 
to cool it." 

Franklin, like Jefferson, approved only of the single cham- 
ber of deputies, and it has been thought that to his great influ- 
ence in France, leading to the adoption of that method, were 
due some of the excesses of the French Revolution. The 
States of Pennsylvania and Georgia had, during the Confeder- 
ation, but one legislative body ; the Confederation itself had 
but one, and the great State of New York voted in the con- 
vention of 1787 against having more than one. Some of the 
most enlightened European reformers — Mazzini, Louis Blanc, 
Stuart Mill, even Goldwin Smith — have always believed the 
second House to be a source of weakness in American insti- 
tutions, while the general feeling of Americans is overwhelm- 
ingly in its favor. Yet its mere existence is a type of that 
combination which is at the foundation of the national govern- 
ment. If Patrick Henry was right, if he had wholly ceased to 
be a Virginian in becoming an American, then there should be 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION. 



299 



no separate representation of the States. If Jefferson was rio-ht 
— who considered the Union only a temporary device to carry 
the colonies through the war for Independence — then the States 
only should be represented, and they should weigh equally, 
whether small or large. But Elbridge Gerry included both 




ELBRIDGE GERRY. 



Statements when he said : " We are neither the same nation nor 
different nations. We ought not, therefore, to pursue the one 
or the other of these ideas too closely." This statement is re- 
garded by Von Hoist, the acutest foreign critic of American 
institutions since De Tocqueville, as containing the whole se- 
cret of American history. 



300 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

We are apt to suppose that the sentiment of union among 
the colonies, once formed, went steadily on increasing. Not at 
all ; it went, like all other things, by action and reaction. It 
was before a shot was fired that Patrick Henry had thrilled the 
people's ears with his proud assertion of nationality. " The dis- 
tinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New-Yorkers, and 
New-Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian ; I am an 
American." But as the war went on, the " people " of the United 
States came again to be loosely described as the " inhabitants " 
of the States. The separate commonwealths had the organiza- 
tion, the power, all but the army; and one of- them, North Caro- 
lina, went so far as to plan a fleet. The Confederation was 
only, as it described itself, " a firm league of friendship ;" the 
Continental government was once actually characterized in 
Massachusetts as a foreign power; it was the creation of war's 
necessities, while the States controlled the daily life. Washing- 
ton had to complain that the States were too much engaged in 
their " local concerns," and he had to plead for the " great busi- 
ness of a nation." Fisher Ames wrote, " Instead of feeling as 
a nation, a State is our country." So far as the influence of 
foreign nations went, it tended only to disintegrate, not to unite. 
Even the one friendly government of Europe, the French, had 
no interest in promoting union ; the cabinet at Versailles wrote 
to its minister in America (August 30, 1787) that it would not 
regret to see the Confederation broken up, and that it had rec- 
ognized " no other object than to deprive Great Britain of that 
vast continent." - "~~ ' 

In short, the Confederation waned day by day ; it had no 
power, for power had been carefully withheld from it ; it had 
only influence, and, as Washington once said, " Influence is not 
government." Fisher Ames declared that " the corporation of 
a college or a missionary society were greater potentates than 
Congress. . . . The government of a great nation had barely 
revenue enough to buy stationery for its clerks, or to pay the 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION. 301 

salary of the door-keepers." It existed only to carry on the 
war as it best could, and when the war ended, the prestige of 
the Confederation was gone. There was left a people with- 
out a government, and this people was demoralized amid suc- 




FISHER AMES. 



cess, discontented in spite of its triumph. Washington thus 
despairingly summed up the situation : " From the high ground 
we stood upon, from the plain path which invited our footsteps, 
to be so fallen, so lost, is really mortifying ; but virtue, I fear. 



302 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

has in some degree taken its departure from our land, and the 
want of a disposition to do justice is the source of our national 
embarrassments." 

The downfall of the Confederation was greatly aided by the 
celebrated insurrection of Daniel Shays in Massachusetts — an 
occasion when armed mobs broke up the courts and interrupted 
all the orderly processes of law. This body numbered, accord- 
ing to the estimate of General Knox — who went to Springfield 
to provide for the defence of the arsenal against them — not less 
than twelve or fifteen thousand men, scattered through the New 
England States ; and he estimated the whole force of their 
friends and supporters at two-sevenths of the population — not, 
as Von Hoist says, one-half. The grounds of this insurrection 
were, as it seems to me, a shade more plausible, and hence more 
formidable, than the historians have recognized. As stated by 
Knox, these views were based expressly on the peculiar state of 
things at the close of a lonsf and exhaustinof war, and amounted 
simply to the doctrine that, being narrowly rescued from ship- 
wreck, the whole half-drowned company should share alike. As 
a result of the war, they urged, almost everybody was bankrupt. 
John Adams's horse-jockey client was really no worse off than 
the most sober and honest mechanic. Of the few who had any 
money, some were speculators and contractors, who had grown 
rich out of the government ; others were Tories in disguise, who 
had saved their property froni a just confiscation. All this 
property, having been saved from the British by the sacrifices 
of all, should in justice be shared among all. Yet they would 
not demand so much as that: let there be simply a remission of 
debts and a further issue of paper-money. 

Audacious as this proposition now seems, it was not wholly 
inconsistent with some things that had gone before it. If 
Washington himself thought it fitting to celebrate the surrender 
of Cornwallis by a general release of prisoners from jail, why 
not now carry this rejoicing a little further, and have an equally 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION. 



303 




SHAYS'S MOB IN POSSESSION (JF A COURT-HOUSE. 



general release of those who were on their way to jail ? Thus 
they reasoned, or might have reasoned, and all this helps us to 
understand a little better why it was that Jefferson did not share 



304 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

the general alarm at these doctrines, but, on the whole, rather 
approved of the outbreak. " Can history produce," he said, " an 
instance of rebellion so honorably conducted ?" " God forbid 
we shall ever be without such a rebellion !" " A little rebellion 
now and then is a ffood thins:." " An observation of this truth 
should render republican governors so mild as not to discourage 
them too much." Yet those who were on the spot saw in this 
rebellion not only the weakness of the general government, but 
that of the separate States as well. " Not only is State against 
State, and all against the Federal head," wrote General Knox to 
Washington, " but the States within themselves possess the 
name only, without having the essential concomitants of govern- 
ment. ... On the very first impression of faction and licentious- 
ness, the fine theoretic government of Massachusetts has given 
way." 

Even before this insurrection, a convention, attended by five 
States only, had been held at Annapolis (September, 1786), with 
a view to some improved national organization. It called a 
general convention, which met at Philadelphia, having barely a 
quorum of States, on May 25, 1787. There the delegates sat 
amid constant interruptions and antagonisms, the majority of 
the New York delegation leaving once under protest, South 
Carolina protesting, Elbridge Gerry predicting failure, and Ben- 
jamin Franklin despairingly proposing to open the sessions 
thenceforward with prayer as the last remaining hope. Then 
the Constitution was adopted at last — only to come into new 
and more heated discussion in every State. We have in The 
Federaiisi Hamilton's great defence of it ; but Patrick Henry 
himself turned his eloquence against it in Virginia, and Samuel 
Adams in Massachusetts. These were two very powerful oppo- 
nents, who were well entitled to a voice ; and in these two im- 
portant States the Constitution was accepted by majorities so 
small that the change of a dozen votes would have caused de- 
feat. In the New York Convention the vote stood 30 to 27; in 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION. 305 

Rhode Island, 34 to 32 ; this being the last State to ratify, and 
the result being secured by a change of one vote under the in- 
structions of a town-meeting in the little village of Middletown, 
too small, even at this day, to have a post-ofifice. By a chance 
thus narrow was the United States born into a nation. The 
contest, as Washington wrote to Lee, was " not so much for 
glory as existence." 

And as thus finally created the nation was neither English 
nor French, but American. It was in very essential features a 
new departure. It is common to say that the French Revolu- 
tion brought with it French political theories in the United 
States. Edmund Burke wrote that the colonists were " not only 
devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas and 
on English principles," yet there is a prevalent impression that 
the influence of France converted this Enorlish feeling into a 
French habit of mind, and that the desire to legislate on the 
abstract rights of man came from that side of the English 
Channel. But Jefferson had never been in France, nor under 
any strong French influence, when he, as the Rev. Ezra Stiles 
said, " poured the soul of a continent into the monumental Act 
of Independence ;" and Franklin had made but flying visits to 
Paris when he wrote in England, about 1770, those striking 
sentences, under the name of " Some Good Whig Principles," 
which form the best compendium of what is called Jeffersonian 
Democracy : " The all of one man is as dear to him as the all 
of another, and the poor man has an equal right, but more need, 
to have representatives in the legislature than the rich one." 
What are sometimes reproachfully called " transcendental poli- 
tics " — political action, that is, based on an abstract theory — 
arose spontaneously in that age ; the Constitution was based on 
them ; and in urging them America probably influenced France 
more than France affected America. There is now a reaction 
against them, and perhaps it is as well that these oscillations of 
the pendulum should take place ; but I am not one of those who 

20 



306 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

believe that the people of the United States will ever outgrow 
the Declaration of Independence. 

One of the most momentous acts of the Continental Con- 
gress had been to receive from the State of Virginia the gift of 
a vast unsettled territory north-west of the Ohio, and to apply- 
to this wide realm the guarantee of freedom from slavery. This 
safeguard was but the fulfilment of a condition suggested by 
Timothy Pickering, when, in 1783, General Rufus Putnam and 
nearly three hundred army officers had proposed to form a new 
State in that very region of the Ohio. They' sent in a memorial 
to Congress asking for a grant of land. Washington heartily 
endorsed the project, but nothing came of it. North Carolina 
soon after made a cession of land to the United States, and then 
revoked it ; but the people on the ceded territory declared them- 
selves for a time to be a separate State, under the name of 
Franklin. Virginia, through Thomas Jefferson, finally delivered 
a deed on March i, 1784, by which she ceded to the United 
States all her territory north-west of the Ohio. The great gift 
was accepted, and a plan of government was adopted, into which 
Jefferson tried to introduce an antislavery ordinance, but he was 
defeated by a single vote. Again, in 1785, Rufus King, of Mas- 
sachusetts, seconded by William Ellery, of Rhode Island, pro- 
posed to revive Jefferson's rejected clause, but again it failed, 
being smothered by a committee. It was not till July 13, 1787, 
that the statute passed by which slavery was forever prohibited 
in the territory of the North-west, this being moved by Nathan 
Dane as an amendment to an ordinance already adopted — which 
he himself had framed — and being passed by a vote of every 
State present in the Congress, eight in all. Under this statute 
the Ohio Company — organized in Boston the year before as the 
final outcome of Rufus Putnam's proposed colony of officers — 
bought from the government five or six millions of acres, and 
entered on the first great movement of emigration west of the 
Ohio. The report creating the colony provided for public- 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION. 



307 



schools, for religions institutions, and for a university. The 
land was to be paid for in United States certificates of debt, and 
its price in specie was between eight and nine cents an acre. 
The settlers were almost wholly men who had served in the 
army, and were used to organization and discipline. The In- 
dian title to the lands of the proposed settlement had been re- 




THE INAUGURATION OF WASHINGTON. 
TFrom the steel engraving by F. O'C. Darley in Irving's "Washington," by permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons.] 



leased by treaty. It was hailed by all as a great step in the 
national existence, although it was really a far greater step than 
any one yet dreamed. " No colony in America," wrote Wash- 
ington, " was ever settled under such favorable auspices as that 
which has just commenced at the Muskingum." 

It had been provided that the new constitution should go 



3o8 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

into effect when nine States had ratified it. That period having 
arrived, Congress fixed the first Wednesday in January, 1789, 
for the choice of Presidential electors, and the first Wednesday 
in March for the date when the new government should go into 
power. On March 4, 1789, the Continental Congress ceased to 
exist, but it was several weeks before either House of the new 
Congress was organized. On April 6th the organization of the 
two Houses was complete, the electoral votes were counted ; and 
on April 21st John Adams took his seat as Vice-president in the 
chair of the Senate. On the 30th of April the streets around 
the old " Federal Hall " in New York City were so densely 
crowded that it seemed, in the vivid phrase of an eye-witness, 
" as if one might literally walk on the heads of the people." On 
the balcony of the hall was a table covered with crimson velvet, 
upon which lay a Bible on a crimson cushion. Out upon the 
balcony came, with his accustomed dignity, the man whose gen- 
eralship, whose patience, whose self-denial, had achieved and 
then preserved the liberties of the nation ; the man who, greater 
than Ccesar, had held a kingly crown within reach, and had re- 
fused it. Washington stood a moment amid the shouts of the 
people, then bowed, and took the oath, administered by Chan- 
cellor Livingston. At this moment a flag was raised upon the 
cupola of the hall ; a discharge of artillery followed, and the 
assembled people again filled the air with their shouting. Thus 
simple was the ceremonial which announced that a nation was 
born. 



XIII. 

OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE. 

" Peace, which in our coiiritry's cradle 
Draws the sweet infant breath of gentle sleep." 

Shakespeare. Richard II. , i. 3. 

THE year 1789 saw a new nation in its cradle in the city of 
New York. Liberty was born, but had yet to learn how 
to go alone. Political precedents were still to be established, 
social customs to be formed anew. New York City, the first 
seat of national government, had warmly welcomed Washington, 
though the State of New York had not voted for him ; and now 
that he was in oflfice, men and women waited with eafjer interest 
to see what kind of political and social life would surround him. 
The city then contained nearly thirty- three thousand people. 
It had long been more cosmopolitan than any other in the colo- 
nies, but it had also been longer occupied by the British, and 
had been more lately under the influence of loyal traditions and 
royal ofificials. This influence the languid sway of the "confed- 
eration " had hardly dispelled. What condition of things would 
the newly organized republic establish } 

It was a period of much social display. Class distinctions 
still prevailed strongly, for the French Revolution had not yet 
followed the American Revolution to sweep them away. Em- 
ployers were still called masters ; gentlemen still wore velvets, 
damasks, knee-breeches, silk stockings, silver buckles, ruffled 
shirts, voluminous cravats, scarlet cloaks. The Revolution had 



310 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

made many poor, but it had enriched many, and money was 
lavishly spent. People gave great entertainments, kept tank- 
ards of punch on the table for morning visitors of both se^ces, 
and returned in sedan-chairs from evening parties. \Dr. JVlk- 
nasseh Cutler went to a dinner-party of forty-four gentlemen at 
the house of General Knox, just before his appointment as Sec- 
retary of War. All the guests were officers of the late Conti- 
nental army, and every one, except Cutler himself, wore the 
badge of the Society of the Cincinnati. On another occasion 
he dined there with a French nobleman ; the dinner was served 
"in high style, much in the French style." Mrs. Knox seemed 
to him to mimic " the military style," which he found " very dis- 
gusting in a female." This is his description of her head-dress : 
" Her hair in front is craped at least a foot high, much in the 
form of a churn bottom upward, and topped off with a wire 
skeleton in the same form, covered with black gauze, which 
hangs in streamers down her back. Her hair behind is in a 
large braid, and confined with a monstrous crooked comb." 

Mrs. Knox's head-dress would have had no more importance 
than that of any other lady of the period, but that no other lady 
came so near to being the active head of American " society " at 
the outset of this government. General Knox and his wife were 
two people of enormous size — were, indeed, said to be the larg- 
est couple in New York— ^and they were as expansive in their 
hospitality as in their persons. The European visitors, who 
were abundant about that time, and especially the numerous 
Frenchmen who flocked to see the new republic — and who then, 
as now, gravitated naturally to that society where they were best 
amused — turned readily to Mrs. Knox's entertainments from 
those of Mrs. Washington. One traveller even complained of 
the new President that his bows were more distant and stiff\ 
than any he had seen in England. Of the other members of 
the cabinet, neither Hamilton, Jefferson, nor Randolph was in a 
position to receive company in the grand style, so that during 



OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE. 311 

the short period when New York was the seat of government, 
the house of the Knoxes in Broadway was emphatically the 
centre of social vivacity for the nation. 

This was a matter of some importance when more political 
questions were settled at the dinner-table than in public debate, 
and when Washington himself would invite his subordinates to 
discuss affairs of State " over a bottle of wine." The social life 
of any community is always the foundation of its political life, 
and this was especially true when the United States began to 
exist, because there was a general suspicion in Europe that the 
new republic would be hopelessly plebeian. When we consider 
that even in 1845 an English lady of rank, trying to dissuade 
Dickens from visiting America, said, " W^hy do you not go down 
to Brighton, and visit the third and fourth rate people there } — 
that would be just the same, '\ we know that she only expressed 
the current British feeling, which must have existed very much 
more strongly in 1789. What could be the social condition of 
that country whose highest official had never been in Europe, 
and did not speak French } Against this suspicion the six 
white horses of President Washington were a comparatively 
slight protest. Mere wealth can buy horses ; indeed, they are 
among the first symptoms of wealth. To discerning observers 
the true mark of superiority was to be found in the grave dig- 
nity of the man. It is hard to see how he acquired that trait 
among the jovial fox-hunting squires in whose society he had 
been reared ; perhaps his real training was in his long and si- 
lent expeditions in the woods. His manners and his bearing 
showed the marks of that forest life, and not of an artificial 
society; his gait, according to his enthusiastic admirer, William 
Sullivan, was that of a farmer or woodsman, not of a soldier; 
he reminded Josiah Ouincy of the country gentlemen from 
Western Massachusetts, not accustomed to mix much in society, 
and not easy or graceful, though strictly polite. But the most 
genuine personal dignity he certainly had ; his wife sustained 



312 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

him in it — at least until party bitterness began to prevail — and 
therefore the youno- French noblemen found his manners as 
unquestionably good as their own, though less pliant. 

Nor were any of the members of his cabinet wanting in this 
respect. French society as well as French political principles 
had influenced Jefferson, and he showed by his flattering words 
to Madame De Brehan and other fine ladies that he had culti- 
vated the arts of a courtier; Hamilton had refined manners, 
with the ready adaptation that came from his French blood and 
his West India birth ; Randolph was called " the first gentleman 
of Virginia," though described by Sullivan as grave and heavy 
in aspect ; while the cheerful Knox was a man of better early 
education than any of these, for he had been a bookseller, and 
his bookstore in Boston had been, it is recorded, "a great resort 
for the British officers and Tory ladies who were the loji at that 
period." Tried by the standard of the time, there was nothing 
to be ashamed of, but, indeed, quite the contrary, in the bearing 
of Washington's cabinet ministers. John Adams was Vice- 
president, and the Chief-justice was the high-minded John Jay. 
Both these men had agreeable and accomplished wives. Mrs. 
Adams was a woman of much social experience as well as tal- 
ent and character. She describes Mrs. Jay as "showy but 
pleasing," and both these women appear to greatest advantage 
in their letters to their respective husbands. As to the house- 
holds of the cabinet ministers, Jefferson was a widower; Mrs. 
Knox has already been characterized ; and the French traveller 
Brissot described Mrs. Hamilton as " a charming woman, who 
joined to the graces all the candor and simplicity of the Amer- 
ican wife." These made the leading official families at the seat 
of government. 

The French Minister at that time was the Comte de Mous- 
tier, whose sister, Madame De Brehan, accompanied him to this 
country. Jefferson had assured her that her manners were a 
" model of perfection," while others found her " a little, singular, 



OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE. 313 

whimsical, hysterical old woman." His secretary of leo-ation 
was M. Otto, part of whose keen and penetrating correspond- 
ence has lately been translated by Mr. Bancroft ; he had married 
an American wife, one of the Livingston family. The EnoHsh 
Consul-general, Sir John Temple, had also married an Amer- 
ican, the daughter of Governor Bcwdoin, of Massachusetts. 
These were the leading people " in society " — a society whose 
standard, after all, was not luxurious or extravaoant. Oliver 
Wolcott wrote to his wife when he was invited to come to 
New York as Auditor of the Treasury : " The example of the 
President and his family will render parade and expense im- 
proper and disreputable." It is pleasant to add that after 
three months' stay at the seat of government, he wrote home 
to his mother, " Honesty is as much in fashion as in Con- 
necticut." 
^^, Mrs. Washington's receptions were reproached as " intro- 
ductory to the pageantry of courts," but it was very modest 
pageantry. Nothing could have been less festive or more harm- 
less than the hospitality of the Presidential abode. An English 
manufacturer who was invited there to breakfast reports a meal 
of admirable simplicity — tea, coffee, sliced tongue, dry toast, and 
butter — " but no broiled fish, as is the general custom," he adds. 
At her evening receptions Mrs. Washington offered her guests 
tea and coffee with plum-cake ; at nine she warned her visitors 
that the general kept early hours, and after this remark the 
guests had no choice but to do the same. At these entertain- 
ments of hers the President was but a guest — without his sword 
— and found it necessary also to retreat in good order at the 
word of command. His own receptions were for invited guests 
only, and took place every other w^eek between three and four 
P.M. The President stood before the fireplace in full black vel- 
vet, with his hair powdered and gathered into a bag; he wore 
yellow gloves and silver buckles, with a steel-hilted sword in a 
white leather scabbard ; he held in his hand a cocked hat with 



314 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

a feather. | This is the description given by WiUiam Sullivan, 
in his " Familiar Letters on Public Characters." 

1^ If it was the object of Washington to make these occasions 
stiffer than the drawing-rooms of any crowned potentate, he 
succeeded. Names were announced, gentlemen were presented, 
the President bowed, but never shook hands ; at a quarter past 
three the doors were closed, and the visitors formed a circle; 
the President made the circuit, addressing a few words to each; 
then they bowed and retired. j/It is hard to^ imagine that these 
mild entertainments could have been severely censured as ex- 
travagant or monarchical ; one can better comprehend how the 
censure could be applied to the street equipage of the new Pres- 
ident — the cream-colored carriage painted in medallions, and the 
liveries of white turned up with green. Yet these were, perhaps, 
more readily recognized as essential to the dignity of his station. 
It was with the desire of promoting this dignity that the 
Senators of the new nation were anxious to give the President 
an official title. The plan was said to have originated with 
John Adams, who believed " splendor and majesty " to be im- 
portant in a republic ; and there was a joint committee of Con- 
gress to consider the matter. This committee reported against 
it, but the dissatisfied Senate still favored a title, as it well 
might, at a time when the Senators themselves were habitually 
called " Most Honorable." They proposed to call the Chief 
Magistrate " His Highness, the President of the United States 
of America, and Protector of their Liberties." The House ob- 
jected ; the country at large was divided. Chief-justice McKean 
proposed "His Serene Highness;" somebody else suggested 
"The President -general ;" and Governor Sullivan thought that 
" His Patriotic Majesty " would not be inappropriate, since he 
represented the majesty of the people. Washington himself, it 
is said, favored " His High Mightiness," which was the phrase 
used by the Stadtholder of Holland. It was the common-sense 
of the nation that swept these extravagances aside ; it was one 



OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE. 



315 




AT MRS. WASHINGTON'S RECEPTION. 



of the many occasions in American history when the truth of 
Talleyrand's saying has been vindicated, that everybody knows 
more than anybody. y^ 

But when it became needful to go behind these externals, 
and to select a cabinet ministry for the actual work of govern- 
ment, the sane and quiet judgment of Washington made itself 
felt. At that period the cabinet consisted of but four persons, 



3l6 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

and it was the theory that it should not be made up of mere 
clerks and staff officers, but of the ablest and most conspicuous 
men in the nation. Washington being President, Adams and 
Jay having also been assigned to office, there naturally followed 
the two men who had contributed most in their different ways 
to the intellectual construction of the nation. Hamilton and 
Jefferson were brought together in the cabinet — the one as 
Secretary of the Treasury, the other as Secretary of State — 
not because they agreed, but because they differed. Tried by 
all immediate and temporary tests, it is impossible to deny to 
Hamilton the position of leading intellect during the constitu- 
tional period ; and his clear and cogent ability contrasts strong- 
ly with the peculiar mental action, always fresh and penetrating, 
but often lawless and confused, of his great rival. Hamilton 
was more coherent, more truthful, more combative, more gen- 
erous, and more limited. His power was as an organizer and 
advocate of measures, and this is a less secure passport to 
fame than lies in the announcement of great principles. The 
difference between Hamilton and Jefferson on questions of 
finance and States-rights was only the symbol of a deeper diver- 
gence. The contrast between them was not so much in acts 
as in theories ; not in what they did, but in what they dreamed. 
Both had their visions, and held to them ardently, but the spirit 
of the nation was fortunately stronger than either; it made 
Hamilton support a republic against his will, and made Jeffer- 
son acquiesce, in spite of himself, in a tolerably strong central 
government. 

There is not a trace of evidence that Hamilton, even when 
most denounced as a " monocrat " and a " monist," ever desired 
to bring about a monarchy in America. He no doubt believed 
the British constitution to be the most perfect model of govern- 
ment ever devised by man ; but it is also true, as Jefferson him- 
self admitted, that Hamilton saw the spirit of the American 
people to be wholly republican. This is just what Hamilton 




ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 

[From the portrait by Weimar, in the Governor's Room, New York City Hall.] 



OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE. 319 

says of himself ; all his action was based on the opinion " that 
the political principle of this country would endure nothing but 
republican government." Fisher Ames, his ablest ally, said the 
same as explicitly : " Monarchy is no path of liberty — offers no 
hopes. It could not stand; and would, if tried, lead to more 
agitation and revolution than anything else." What Hamilton 
and Ames believed — and very reasonably, so far as the mere 
teachings of experience went — was that a republic was an 
enormous risk to run ; and they drew the very questionable 
conclusion that this risk must be diminished by making the 
I republic as much like a monarchy as possible. For instance 
ft^ if Hamilton could have had his way, only holders of real estate 
would have had the right to vote for President and Senators, 
and these would have held office for life, or at least during orood 
behavior ; the President would have appointed all the Governors 
of States, and they would have had a veto on all State legisla- 
tion. All this he announced in the Constitutional Convention, 
with the greatest frankness, not hesitating to call even the 
V, British House of Lords " a most noble institution." Havinsf 
^ V thus indicated his ideal government, he accepted what he could 
get, and garve his great powers to carrying out a constitution 
about which he had serious misgivings. On the other hand, 
if Jefferson could have had his way, national organization would 
^ have been a shadow. " Were it left me to decide," he once 
i wrote, " whether we should have a government without newspa- 
pers or a newspaper without a government, I should not hesi- 
2>^j tate a moment to prefer the latter." He accepted the constitu- 
- \ \^\QY\ as a necessary evil, tempered by newspapers — then the very 
fv^ worst newspapers that ever flourished on American soil. 

"Hamilton and I," wrote Jefferson, " were pitted against 
each other every day in the cabinet, like two fighting-cocks." 
The first passage between them was the only one in which 
Hamilton had clearly the advantage of his less practised antag- 
onist, making Jefferson, indeed, the instrument of his own de- 



320 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

feat. The transfer of the capital to the banks of the Potomac 
was secured by the first of many compromises between the 
Northern and Southern States, after a debate in which the 
formidable slavery question showed itself often, as it had shown 
itself at the very formation of the constitution. The removal 
of the capital was clearly the price paid by Hamilton for Jeffer- 
son's acquiescence in his first great financial measure. This 
measure was the national assumption of the State debts to an 
amount not to exceed twenty million dollars. It was met by 
vehement opposition, partly because it bore very unequally on 
the States, but mainly on the ground that the claims were in the 
hands of speculators, and were greatly depreciated. Yet it was 
an essential part of that great series of financial projects on 
which Hamilton's fanie must rest, even more than on his papers 
in the Fedej-alist — though these secured the adoption of the 
constitution. Three measures — the assumption of the State 
debts, the funding act, and the national bank — were what 
changed the bankruptcy of the new nation into solvency and 
credit. There may be question as to the good or bad prece- 
dents established by these enactments, but there can be no 
doubt as to their immediate success. Jefferson opposed them; 
it is certain that Jefferson never could have originated them or 
carried them through. The financial problem — the first, and 
in one sense the lowest problem to be met by the new govern- 
ment — was solved by Hamilton. 

It seems curious to find in the correspondence of the pub- 
lic men of that day so little that relates to the appointment or 
removal of particular officials. One reason is that the officials 
were then so few. The whole number in civil office during 
Washington's administration were, in his own phrase, " a mere 
handful," and during his two Presidential terms he removed 
but eight, all for cause, this list not including Mr. Pinckney, 
the French Minister, who was recalled by desire of the govern- 
ment of that nation. The question of removal was almost 



OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE, 321 

wholly an abstract one, but, fortunately for us, the men of that 
period had a great taste for the abstract principles of govern- 
ment ; and the consequence was that this particular question 
was debated as fully and ardently as if the number of of^cials 
had already been reckoned by tens of thousands. Many points 
in the prolonged controversy seem like the civil service discus- 
sions of to-day. The main debate took place in the House of 
Representatives, beginning June 16, 1789, and lasting four 
days ; and it is fortunately preserved to us in full as a part of 
the appendix to " Elliott's Debates." It arose on the bill to 
establish the Department of Foreign Affairs, afterwards called 
the State Department. It was moved to strike out the words 
— as applied to the oflficer thus created — " to be removable from 
office by the President of the United States." The importance 
of the subject was amply recognized, Mr. Madison going so far 
as to say : " The decision that is at this time made will become 
the permanent exposition of the constitution ; and on a perma- 
nent exposition of the constitution will depend the genius and 
character of the whole government." He and others took the 
ground that in no way could full executive responsibility be 
placed upon the President unless he had a corresponding 
power over his subordinates. All the familiar arguments in 
favor of a strong government were brought forward, and they 
were met by the obvious arguments against it. " This clause 
of the bill," said Mr. Page, of North Carolina, " contains in it 
the seeds of royal prerogative. Everything which has been 
said in favor of energy in the Executive may go to the destruc- 
tion of freedom, and establish despotism. This very energy, 
so much talked of, has led many patriots to the Bastile, to the 
block, and to the halter." 

Perhaps the ablest assailant of the power of removal was 
Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts — he through whom a new 
and permanent phrase was added to the American dialect in 
the word gcnyntandcr. He claimed in this debate that un- 

21 



322 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

limited removal from office belonged only to a king; that to 
a four years' President such power could only be made useful 
" by being the means of procuring him a re-election." If this 
step were taken, he said, the Presidency should be for life, or 
even hereditary. With some foresight of our later experience 
he added : " The officers, instead of being the machinery of the 
government, moving in regular order prescribed by the legislat- 
ure, will be the mere puppets of the President, to be employed 
or thrown aside as useless lumber according to his fancy." His 
arguments did not prevail ; the clause was retained by a vote of 
34 to 20, and after some further modification the bill passed by 
a small majority in the House, and by the casting vote of the 
Vice-president in the Senate. The result of that vote has not 
been followed by quite the evils that Page and Gerry feared, 
but it has undoubtedly influenced, as Madison predicted, the 
genius and character of the whole government. It is to be 
remembered that no prophetic vision had yet revealed to any 
one the vast future population for which Congress was legislat- 
ing, and Madison plainly thought himself making a very bold 
guess when he estimated that it might " in some years" double 
in number, and reach six millions. 

On the i6th of July, 1790, Congress made up its mind to 
remove to the banks of the Potomac, but before the site was 
fixed upon, the seat of government was temporarily transferred 
(in November, 1790) to Philadelphia, then the largest town in 
the country, and claiming to be regarded as its metropolis. 
The French visitors criticised the city, found its rectangular 
formation tiresome, and the habits of its people sad ; but Amer- 
icans thought it gay and delightful. Brissot de Warville de- 
clared that the pretensions of the ladies were " too affected to 
be pleasing," and the Comte de Rochambeau said that the wives 
of merchants went to the extreme of French fashions. Mrs. 
John Adams, who had lived in Europe, complained of a want 
of etiquette, but found Philadelphia society eminently friendly 



OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE. 323 

and agreeable. Superior taste and a livelier wit were habitu- 
ally claimed for the Philadelphia ladies. It was said by a viva- 
cious maiden who went from that city to New York — Rebecca 
Franks, afterwards Lady Johnston— that the Philadelphia belles 
had " more cleverness in the turn of an eye than those of New 
York in their wliole composition." In the latter city, she said, 



MRS. BINGHAM. 



there was no conversation without the aid of cards ; in Phila- 
delphia the chat never flagged. There were plenty of leading 
ladies. Mrs. Knox was still conspicuous, playing perpetual 
whist. Mrs. Bingham was the most charming of hostesses; 
and among women coming from other parts of the country, and 
celebrated for character or beauty, were Mrs. Theodore Sedg- 
wick, of Massachusetts, and Mrs. Oliver Wolcott, of Litchfield, 



324 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Connecticut. It was of the latter that the story is told that the 
British Minister said to Senator Tracy, of Connecticut : " Your 
countrywoman would be admired at St. James's." " Sir," said the 
patriotic American, " she is admired even on Litchfield Hill." 

There was in Philadelphia a theatre which was much at- 
tended, and which must have had a rather exceptional company 
for that period, inasmuch as Chief-justice Jay assured his wife 
that it was composed of "decent, moral people." In society, 
habits were not always quite moral, or conversation always quite 
decent. Gentlemen, according to John Adams, sat till eleven 
o'clock over their after-dinner wine, and drank healths in that 
elaborate way which still amazes the American visitor in Eng- 
land. Nay, young ladies, if we may accept Miss Rebecca Franks 
as authority, drank each other's health out of punch tankards in 
the morning. Gambling prevailed among both sexes. It was 
not uncommon to hear that a man or woman had lost three 
or four hundred dollars in an evening. An anonymous letter- 
writer, quoted in Mr. Griswold's " Republican Court," declares 
that some resident families could not have supported the cost 
of their entertainments and their losses at loo, but that they 
had the adroitness to make the temporary residents pay their 
expenses. At balls people danced country-dances, the partners 
being designated beforehand by the host, and being usually un- 
changed during the whole evening — though " this severity was 
sometimes mitigated," in the language of the Marquis de Chas- 
tellux-/-and the supper was served about midnight. Talleyrand, 
in later years, looking back on the Philadelphia of that pe- 
riod, found its luxury a theme for sarcasm in quality as well as 
quantity: Leiir luxe est affretix, he said. Going beyond the strict 
circles of fashion, we find that some social peculiarities which 
we regard as recent seem to have existed in full force at the 
very foundation of the republic. The aversion of white Amer- 
icans to domestic service, the social freedom given to young 
girls, the habit of eating hot bread — these form the constant 



OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE. 



325 



theme of remark by the French visitors in the time of Wash- 
ington. In some physiological matters American habits are 
now unquestionably modified for the better. Chastellux reports 
that at the best dinners of the period there was usually but 
one course besides the dessert ; and Volney describes people as 
drinking very strong tea immediately after this meal, and clos- 




MRS. THEODORE SEDGWICK. 



ing the evening with a supper of salt meat. At other points, 
again, the national traits seem to have been bewilderingly trans- 
formed by the century that has since passed. The Chevalier de 
Beaujour describes Americans as usually having ruddy com- 
plexions, but without delicacy of feature or play of expression ; 
whereas all these characteristics will be found by the testimony 
of later travellers to be now precisely reversed, the features 



326 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

having grown delicate, the expression vivacious, and the com- 
plexion pale. 

The standard of women's education was still low, and in 
society they had to rely on native talent and the conversation 
of clever men ; yet Mercy Warren's history had been accepted 
as a really able work, and Phillis Wheatley s poems had passed 
for a phenomenon. Mrs. Morton, of Massachusetts, also, under 
the name of " Philenia," had published a poem called " Beacon 
Hill," of which Robert Treat Paine, himselt a man of ability, 
had written in this admiring strain: 

"Beacon shall live, the theme of future lays, 
Philenia bids ; obsequious time obeys. 
Beacon shall live, embalmed in verse sublime, 
The new Parnassus of a- nobler clime." 

The original beacon has long since fallen ; the hill to which it 
gave its name has been much cut down ; and the fame of 
Philenia has been yet more sadly obliterated. Yet she and 
such as she undoubtedly contributed to the vague suspicions 
of monarchical design which began to array themselves against 
Washington. For did not these tuneful people write birthday 
odes to him ; and were not birthday odes clearly monarchical 1 

Great men are sometimes influenced by minor considera- 
tions. It is probable that Washington's desire to retire from 
the Presidency after one term was largely due to the public 
criticisms on such innocent things as these melodious flatteries 
and Mrs. Washington's receptions. But he was still overwhelm- 
ingly popular, and his re-election in 1792 was unanimous, John 
Adams being again Vice-president, and the seat of government 
being still Philadelphia. It was thought at first by both Jeffer- 
son and^ Hamilton that the ceremony of a re-inaugvation should 
be a wholly private one at the President's house, but it was 
finally decided by the cabinet that it should be public and in 
the Senate-chamber. Washington thus entered on a second 



OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE. 327 

term of office, which was destined to be far stormier than his 
first term. There were the Indian troubles to be settled, the 
whiskey insurrection in Pennsylvania to be curbed, and the bal- 
ance of neutrality to be kept between France and England. 
The first two questions, though they seemed to belong to mili- 
tary matters alone, were yet complicated with politics, and the 
last was interwoven with the public affairs of all Europe. No 
President, except Abraham Lincoln, has ever yet had to deal 
with questions so difficult ; and it is to be remembered that 
Lincoln had behind him the aid of national traditions already 
formed, while Washington dealt with a newly organized govern- 
ment, and had to create even the traditions. 

The great scheme for filling the North-western Territory 
with settlers had seriously lagged. Great Britain still held her 
posts there ; this encouraged the Indian tribes who had never 
been included in the treaty of peace. It was at this time that 
Kentucky earned the name of the " dark and bloody ground," 
more than fifteen hundred of her pioneer settlers having been 
killed or captured within a few years. General Mercer was 
sent against the Indians with a small body of men in 1 790, and 
was defeated; General St. Clair w^as ordered out the following 
year, with a much larger force, and was beaten disastrously, 
losing nearly a thousand men and many cannon. Washington 
tried in vain to reach the Indians by treaty, and it took " Mad 
Anthony Wayne " and five thousand men to bring about peace 
at last. Near the site of what is now Cincinnati, Wayne made 
his winter camp in 1 793 ; he built forts to strengthen his for- 
ward march, and in August, 1794, fought the battle of Maumee 
Rapids against Indians and Canadians, with the aid of eleven 
hundred Kentucky volunteers. In this battle he completely 
and finally routed the Miami Indians, with a loss of but one 
hundred men, and within sight of a British fort ; and he forced 
the enemy to cease hostilities. On August 3, 1795, Wayne 
stood in presence of more than a thousand Indians at one of 



328 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

his forts, now Greenville, Ohio, and there made a treaty which 
put an end to the Indian wars. This, with the provisions of 
Jay's treaty with England, presently to be mentioned, flung 
open the Western countr}^ to the tide of settlers. 

The French Revolution, passing from its period of promise 
into its epoch of terror, had divided American feeling as it had 
not before been sundered. This formidable French question 
had ceased to be a mere test of political sympathy; it was a 
matter of social feeling as well. England was the traditional 
enemy of the nation ; France the traditional friend ; yet France 
was causing horror to the world, while England stood for estab- 
lished order. Those who had tried to save the American ex- 
periment by keeping as near the English constitution as possi- 
ble might well point to France as the example of the oppo- 
site method. Accordingly, the Federalists, who comprised the 
wealthier and more prominent class of the nation, renewed their 
fidelity to the English traditions. They called the Democrats 
sans culottes, and regarded them not merely as belonging to the 
less educated and less dignified class — which was true — but as 
socially polluted and degraded. When the President's wife 
found that her granddaughter, Nelly Custis, had been receiving 
a guest in her absence, she asked who it was ; then noticing a 
stain where a head had rested against the straw-colored wall- 
paper, she exclaimed : " It was no Federalist : none but a filthy 
Democrat would mark the wall with his good-for-nothing head 
in that manner." Such remarks, when repeated from mouth to 
mouth, did not conduce to the amenities of life. 

Yet the good lady had plenty of provocation. Much could 
be pardoned to a wife who had seen on printed handbills the 
coarse wood-cuts that represented Washington as placed upon 
the guillotine like the French king. Such a caricature, when 
injudiciously shown by Knox to the President at a cabinet meet- 
ing, drove him into " a transport of passion," according to the 
not always trustworthy record of Jefferson ; how, then, could his 



OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE. 329 

wife be indifferent to it? There was really nothing serious to 
quarrel about in the home affairs of the country. The charo-e 
of monarchical tendencies amounted to nothing ; the clear- 
headed Oliver Wolcott wrote that he could not find a man of 
sense who seriously believed it ; and yet Washington was abused 
as if he carried a crown in his pocket. These attacks came 
most furiously from the poet Freneau in his National Gazette, 
established October 31, 1791; and Jefferson, in whose office 
Freneau was translating clerk, declared that this newspaper had 
saved the constitution, which was "galloping fast into mon- 
archy ;" that it had " checked the career of the Monocrats," and 
the like. Washington must have chafed all the more under 
these attacks because the editor, with persistent and painful 
courtesy, sent him four copies of every issue — a refinement of 
cruelty such as our milder times can hardly parallel. 

All these troubles were exasperated by the arrival, on April 
9, 1793, of the first envoy of the new French republic, M. Genet. 
He was received with a display of enthusiasm that might have 
turned any man's head, and his, apparently, needed no turning. 
His journey from Charleston, South Carolina, to Philadelphia 
was like the reception of Lafayette ; all the triumphant rights 
of man were supposed to be embodied in him, and the airs he 
took upon himself seem now incredible. He undertook to fit 
out privateers in American ports, and to bring prizes into those 
ports for condemnation by French consuls ; and when Wash- 
ington checked this impertinence, he threatened to appeal from 
Washington to the people. The nation was instantly divided 
into two parties, and whatever extravagances the French sym- 
pathizers might commit, the Federalists doubled them in imagi- 
nation. They sincerely believed that all sorts of horrors were 
transacted at the banquets given to Genet ; that the guests in 
turn wore the red revolutionary cap — the bonnet ronge ; that a 
roasted pig received the name of the slain King of France, and 
that the severed head was offered in turn to each guest, who 



330 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

exclaimed, theatrically, " Tyrant !" and struck it with his knife. 
These stories may have been chiefly false, but they produced 
as much effect as if they had been true. On the other hand, 
Genet behaved so foolishly and insolently that Jefferson had to 
abandon his cause. " If our citizens," he wrote, " have not al- 
ready been shedding each others blood, it is not owing to the 
moderation of Mr. Geneto" Jefferson himself assented to Wash- 
ington's proclamation of neutrality (April 22, 1793), though he 
rejoiced that it was not issued under that precise name. In- 
deed, throughout the excitement, Jefferson 'seems to have con- 
tributed only the needful influence to do justice to the French 
view of the question, and was less extravagant in that way than 
Hamilton on the other side. 

But after all these extravagances, real or reputed, it was nat- 
ural that every outbreak should be charged to the " democratic 
societies." Washington thought that they instigated the Whis- 
key Insurrection which arose in Pennsylvania in 1794 against 
the excise laws — an insurrection w^iich denounced such laws as 
" the horror of all free States," and went so far as to threaten 
separation from the Union. It was Hamilton who had framed 
the law which caused the revolt, and Hamilton contributed the 
admirable suggestion by which it was quelled. His plan w^as 
to call out so large a force as instantly to overawe the insurrec- 
tion and crush it without firing a shot Washington according- 
ly summoned out 13,000 militia, and the work was done. Un- 
fortunately it led to the reaction which usually follows a com- 
plete strategic success — people turn round and say that there 
never was any danger. The most skilful victories even in war 
are the bloodless ones, but it is apt to be bloodshed alone that 
wins laurels. It happened thus in this case. Jefferson declared 
the affair to have been merely a riot, and not nearly so bad as 
the excise law which created it ; he held to the theory which he 
had announced during Shays's rebellion, that an occasional pop- 
ular commotion was a good remedy for too much government. 



OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE. 33 1 

Jay's treaty with England (November 19, 1794) was the 
turning-point of the personal popularity of Washington. From 
that time a large and increasing minority opposed the Presi- 
dent with all the bitterness of the period; that is, furiously. 
The treaty secured the withdrawal of the British garrisons from 
the North-west, and it guaranteed payment from the British 
treasury for all illegal captures — a payment that amounted to 
ten millions of dollars. So far it might have been popular, but 
it provided also for the payment of all debts owed before the 
Revolution by Americans to British subjects, and this would 
have been enough to make it unpalatable. But it also had to 
encounter the rising sympathy for France, and this led to the 
most vehement opposition. The indignation against it broke 
out in mobs. Jay was burned or hanged in efBgy in several 
cities ; Adams was in one case hanged beside him, with a purse 
of English guineas in his hand ; and the treaty itself was burned 
in Philadelphia by a mob of ten thousand people, before the 
windows of the British Minister. Hamilton, in speaking for it 
at a public meeting in New York, was assailed by a volley of 
stones. " Gentlemen," he said, " if you use such strong argu- 
ments, I must retire." But he only retired to write a series of 
papers in defence of the treaty, which was ratified by just the 
needful two-thirds vote, after a fortnight of discussion. 

We think of those times as purer than the present ; yet the 
perennial moaning over the decline of the republic had already 
begun in the first decade of its existence. Fauchet, the French 
minister who succeeded Genet, declared, truly or falsely, that 
Edmund Randolph, who was at first Attorney-general, but had 
now succeeded Jefferson as Secretary of State, had come to him 
and asked for a bribe to espouse the French side. " Thus," said 
the indignant Frenchman, " the consciences of the pretended 
patriots of America have already their prices. WHiat will be the 
old age of this government if it is thus already decrepit !" And 
as to political violence, the habitual abuse of Washington went 



332 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

on increasing; the Democratic Republicans spoke of him habit- 
ually in their private meetings as " Montezuma ;" they allowed 
him neither uprightness, nor pecuniary honesty, nor military 
ability, nor even personal courage. He himself wrote that every 
act of his administration was tortured, and the grossest misrep- 
resentations made " in such exaggerated and indecent terms as 
could scarcely be applied to a Nero, to a notorious defaulter, or 
even to a common pickpocket." 

His farewell address was made public in September, 1796, 
and he met Congress December 7th, for the last time. The elec- 
toral votes, as counted by the Senate in the following February 
(1797), showed John Adams, of Massachusetts, to have the high- 
est number, and he was declared President-elect; while Jefferson, 
who had the next number, was pronounced to be the Vice-presi- 
dent-elect, according to a constitutional provision since altered. 
On his last day in ofKice Washington wrote to Knox comparing 
himself to " the weary traveller who sees a resting-place, and is 
bending his body to lean thereon. To be suffered to do this in 
peace," he added, " is too much to be endured by some." Ac- 
cordingly, on that very day a Philadelphia newspaper dismissed 
him with a final tirade, whose wild folly is worth remembering 
by all who think that political virulence is on the increase : 

" ' Lord now lettest thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have 
seen Thy salvation !' This was the exclamation of a man who saw a flood of 
blessedness breaking in upon mankind. If ever there was a time that allowed 
this exclamation to be repeated, that time is the present. The man who is the 
source of all our country's misery is this day reduced to the rank of his fellow- 
citizens, and has no longer the power to multiply the woes of these United 
States. Now more than ever is the time to rejoice. Every heart which feels 
for the liberty and happiness of the people must now beat with rapture at the 
thought that this day the name of Washington ceases to give currency to injus- 
tice and to legalize corruption. . . . When we look back upon the eight years of 
Washington's administration, it strikes us with astonishment that one man could 
thus poison the principles of republicanism among our enlightened people, and 
carry his designs against the public liberty so far as to endanger its very exist- 
ence. Yet such is the fact, and if this is apparent to all, this day should form 
a jubilee in the United States." 



XIV. 

THE EARL V AMERICAN PRESIDENTS. 

AN acute foreign observer said well, in the days when John 
Adams was President, that there seemed to be in the 
United States many Englishmen, many Frenchmen, but very 
few Americans. The reason was that the French Revolution 
really drew a red-hot ploughshare through the history of Amer- 
ica as well as through that of France. It not merely divided 
parties, but moulded them : gave them their demarcations, their 
watchwords, and their bitterness. The home issues were for 
a time subordinate, collateral ; the real party lines were estab- 
lished on the other side of the Atlantic. 

Up to the time when the Constitution was formed, it is 
curious to see that France was only the friend of the young 
nation, not its political counsellor. The proof of this is that, in 
the debates which formed the Constitution, France was hardly 
mentioned ; the authorities, the illustrations, the analogies, were 
almost all English. Yet the leading statesmen of the period — 
Franklin, Jay, Adams, Jefferson — had been resident in Paris as 
diplomatists ; and Hamilton was of French descent on the 
mother's side. France, however, gave them no model for imi- 
tation ; the frame of government, where it was not English, was 
simply American. A few years more, and all was changed ; in 
America, as in Europe, the French Revolution was the absorb- 
ing theme. The American newspapers of the day existed main- 
ly to give information about foreign affairs; and they really 



334 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



gave more space to France than to their own country. They 
told something about the wrongs of the French people, though 
few besides Jefferson took them seriously to heart. They told 
a great deal about the horrors of the outbreak, and here men 
divided. American political parties are to-day still imbittered 

by the traditions of 
that great division. 

Those who had 
always distrusted the 
mksses of the people 
inevitably began to 
distrust them more 
than ever. They read 
Burke's " Reflections 
on the French Revo- 
lution," they read Can- 
ning's editorials, and 
they attributed the 
French excesses to 
innate depravity, to 
atheism, to madness. 
Let the people have 
its own way, they ar- 
gued, and it will al- 
ways wish to cut off 
the heads of the better classes, or swing them up to the street- 
lantern. Those who thus reasoned were themselves the better 
classes, in the ordinary sense ; they were the clergy, the lawyers, 
the planters, the merchants — the men \Nho had, or thought they 
had, the largest stake in the country. The Frenchmen they had 
seen were the young men of rank and fortune who had helped 
America to fight through the Revolution — generous, high- 
souled, joyous young soldiers, of whom Lafayette was the con- 
spicuous type. Of the same class were the Frenchmen w^ho had 




COUNT FERSEN. 



THE EARLY AMERICAN PRESIDENTS. 335 

visited America since the Revolution ; who had been pleased 
with everything and had flattered everybody. The handsome 
Count Fersen, who had charmed all hearts at Newport, was the 
very man who had, in the disguise of a coachman, driven the 
French king and queen in their escape from Paris. Lauzun, 
the brilliant commander of French cavalry under Rochambeau, 
was also the picturesque hero who refused to have his hands 
tied on ascending the guillotine, but said gayly to the execution- 
er, " We are both Frenchmen ; we shall do our duty." Who 
could help sympathizing with these fine young fellows } But 
this revolutionist in the red cap, this Jacques with wooden shoes, 
these knitting women, these terrible tricoteuses, the Federalists 
had not seen ; and doubtless the nearer they had seen them 
the less they would have liked them. Consequently, like Burke, 
they " pitied the plumage, but forgot the dying bird." To them 
everything French was now pernicious ; the Reign of Terror 
was not much worse than was the career of those more mod- 
erate revolutionists who resisted that terror or fell beneath it. 
The opinions of this party were best represented by that cele- 
brated periodical, the Anti-Jacobin, now chiefly remembered by 
Canning's best known poem, " The Needy Knife-Grinder." But 
the Anti-Jacobifi lashed every grade of Frenchman and French- 
woman with equal bitterness, if they took the side of the peo- 
ple ; assailed Madame Roland and Madame De Stael as coarse- 
ly as it denounced Robespierre or Dan ton. The American 
Federalists held the same attitude. 

To look below the surface of the French Revolution, to see 
in it the righting of a vast wrong, to find in that wrong some 
explanation of its very excesses, this view — now so generally 
accepted — was confined to a very few of the leaders: Jefferson, 
Samuel Adams, Albert Gallatin. Here, as is usual, the reformer 
found secret affinities with the demagogue. It is easier for the 
demagogue than for any one else to pose for a time as a reform- 
er, and even to be mistaken for one ; and on the other hand the 



336 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

reformer is always tempted to make excuses for the dema- 
gogue, since he himself has usually to wage war against the 
respectable classes. Some men were Federalists because they 
were high-minded, others because they were narrow-minded; 
while the more far-sighted, and also the less scrupulous, became 
Democrats — or, in the original name, Republicans. They used 
this last term not in the rather vague sense of current American 
politics, but in a much more definite manner. In calling them- 
selves Republicans they sincerely believed that nobody else 
wished well to the republic. Thus the party lines which we 
should have expected to find drawn simply on American ques- 
tions were in fact almost wholly controlled by European politics. 
The Federalists were in sympathy with England ; the Demo- 
crats, or Republicans, with France ; and this determined the 
history of the nation, its treaties and its parties, through a series 
of administrations. 

The Federalist President-elect was John Adams — a man of 
great pith and vigor, whose letters and diaries are more racy 
than those of any man of that day, though his more elaborate 
writings are apt to be prolix and dull, like those of the others. 
He was a self-made man, as people say, and one who had a 
strong . natural taste for rank and ceremony ; even having, as 
John Randolph complained, " arms emblazoned on the 'scutch- 
eon of the vice-regal carriage." The more he held to this aris- 
tocratic position, the more people remarked his original want of 
it ; and there have lived within twenty years in Boston old ladies 
who still habitually spoke of him as " that cobbler's son." But 
he was a man, moreover, of extraordinary sense and courage, 
combined with an explosive temper, and a decided want of tact. 
He had at first the public sentiment of New England behind 
him, and a tolerably united party. Having been Vice-president 
under Washington, he seemed to be the natural successor; and 
the peculiar arrangement then prevailing, by which the Vice- 
president was not voted for as a distinct officer, but was simply 




JOHN ADAMS. 
[Engraved by G. Kriiell, from the painting by Gilbert Stuart, owned by T. Jefferson Coolidge, Esq., Eoston.] 



THE EARLY AMERICAN PRESIDENTS. 339 

the Presidential candidate who stood second on the list, led to 
many complications of political manoeuvring, the result of which 
was that John Adams had 71 electoral votes, and became Presi- 
dent, while Thomas Jefferson had 68 votes, and took the next 
place, greatly to his discontent. Adams and Jefferson were 
quite as inappropriately brought together in executive office as 
were Jefferson and Hamilton in the cabinet of Washington. 

Abigail Adams, the President's wife, was undoubtedly the 
most conspicuous American woman of her day, whether by posi- 
tion or by character. When writing to her husband she often 
signed herself " Portia," in accordance with a stately and per- 
haps rather high-flown habit of the period ; and she certainly 
showed qualities which would have done honor to either the 
Roman or Shakespearian heroine of that name. In her letters 
we see her thoroughly revealed. While the battle of Bunker 
Hill was in progress, she wrote that it was "dreadful but glori- 
ous ;" and in the depression of the battle of Long Island she 
said, " If all America is to be ruined and undone by a pack of 
cowards and knaves, I wish to know it," and added, " Don't you 
know me better than to think me a coward V When, first 
among American w^omen, she represented her nation at the 
court of St. James, she met with equal pride the contemptuous 
demeanor of Queen Charlotte; and when her husband was 
chosen President, she wrote to him, " My feelings are not those 
of pride or ostentation upon the occasion ; they are solemnized 
by a sense of the obligations, the important truths and numer- 
ous duties, connected with it." When finally, after four years, 
he failed of re-election, she wrote to her son : " The consequence 
to us is personally that we retire from public life. For myself 
and family I have few regrets. ... If I did not rise with dignity, 
I can at least fall with ease." This was Abigail Adams. In 
person she was distinguished and noble rather than beautiful, 
yet it is satisfactory to know that when she was first presented 
at the British court she wore a white lutestring, trimmed with 



340 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

white crape, festooned with Hlac ribbon and mock point-lace over 
a hoop of enormous extent, with a narrow train three yards long, 
looped up by a ribbon. She wore treble lace ruffles, a dress cap 
with long lace lappets, and two white plumes, these last doubt- 
less soaring straight into the air above her head in the extraor- 
dinary style familiar to us in Gillray's caricatures of that period. 

It was in those days no very agreeable task to be the wife of 
the President. Mrs. Adams has left on record a graphic sketch 
of the White House, where she presided for three months. The 
change in the seat of government had been decided upon for 
twelve years, yet the building was still a vast unfinished barrack, 
with few rooms plastered, no main stairway, not a bell within, 
not a fence without ; it was distressingly cold in winter, while 
the Chief Magistrate of the United States could not obtain for 
love or money a man to cut wood for him in the forests which 
then surrounded Washington. From Washington to Baltimore 
extended an almost unbroken growth of timber, varied only by 
some small and windowless huts. There could as yet be in 
Washington no such varied companionship as had given attrac- 
tion to the seat of government at New York and then at Phila- 
delphia ; yet at Georgetown there was a society which called 
itself eminently polite, and Mrs. Adams records that she re- 
turned fifteen calls in a single day. 

Mr. Adams took his cabinet from his predecessor; it was not 
a stronor one, and it was devoted to Hamilton, between whom 
and the new President there was soon a divergence, Hamilton 
being fond of power, and Adams having a laudable purpose to 
command his own ship. The figure of speech is appropriate, 
for he plunged into a sea of troubles, mainly created by the un- 
reasonable demands of the French government. The French 
" Directory," enraged especially by Jay's treaty with England, 
got rid of one American minister by remonstrance, and drove 
out another with contempt. When Mr. Adams sent three spe- 
cial envoys, they were expected to undertake the most delicate 



THE EARLY AMERICAN PRESIDENTS. 



341 



negotiations with certain semi-official persons designated in 
their correspondence only by the letters X, Y, Z. The plan of 
this covert intercourse came through the private secretary of 





ABIGAIL ADAMS. 



M. de Talleyrand, then French Minister for Foreign Affairs; 
and the impudence of these three letters of the alphabet went so 
far as to propose a bribe of 1,200,000 francs (some $220,000) to 
be paid over to this minister. " You must pay money, a great 



22* 



342 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

deal of money," remarked Monsieur Y {II fan t dc f argent, bean- 
coup de Vargcnt). The secret of these names was kept, but the 
diplomatic correspondence was made public, and created much 
wrath in Europe as well as in America. Moreover, American 
vessels were constantly attacked by France, and yet Congress 
refused to arm its own ships. At last the insults passed beyond 
bearing, and it was at this time that " Millions for defence, not 
one cent for tribute," first became a proverbial phrase, having 
been originally used by Charles C. Pinckney, who, after having 
been expelled from France, was sent back again as one of the 
three envoys. 

Then, with tardy decision, the Republicans yielded to the 
necessity of action, and the Federal party took the lead. War 
was not formally proclaimed, but treaties with France were de- 
clared to be no longer binding. An army was ordered to be 
created, with Washington as Lieutenant-general and Hamilton 
as second in command ; and the President was authorized to 
appoint a Secretary of the Navy and to build twelve new ships- 
of-war. Before these were ready, naval hostilities had actually 
begun ; and Commodore Truxtun, in the U. S. frigate Constel- 
latioti, captured a French frigate in West Indian waters (Feb. 9, 
1799), and afterwards silenced another, which however escaped. 
Great was the excitement over these early naval successes of the 
young nation. Merchant-ships were authorized to arm them.- 
selves, and some three hundred acted upon this authority. It 
is to this period, and not as is commonly supposed to that of 
the Revolution, that Robert Treat Paine's song " Adams and 
Liberty " belongs. The result of it all was that France yielded. 
Talleyrand, the very minister who had dictated the insults, now 
disavowed them, and pledged his government to receive any 
minister the United States might send. The President, in the 
most eminently courageous act of his life, took the responsibil- 
ity of again sending ambassadors ; and did this without even 
consulting his cabinet, which would, as he well knew, oppose it. 



THE EARL Y AMERICAN PRESIDENTS. 343 

They were at once received, and all danger of war with France 
was at an end. 

This bold stroke separated the President permanently from 
at least half of his own party, since the Federalists did not wish 
for peace with France. His course would have given him a 
corresponding increase of favor from the other side, but for the 
great mistake the Federalists had made in passing certain laws, 
called the " Alien " law and the " Sedition " law ; the first of 
these giving the President power to order any dangerous alien 
out of the country, and the second making it a penal offence 
to write anything false, scandalous, or malicious against the 
President or Congress. It was held, most justly, that this last 
law was directly opposed to the Constitution, which had been 
so amended as to guarantee freedom to the press. Looked at 
from this distance, it seems to have been one of those measures 
which inevitably destroy a party ; and the Federalists certainly 
committed suicide when they passed it. It is clear that if it 
had stood, their own ablest newspapers four years after — Den- 
nie's Portfolio, for instance — might have seen their proprietors 
imprisoned. These laws led to action almost equally extreme 
on the other side ; the Republicans, powerless in Congress, fell 
back on their State Legislatures, and Kentucky and Virginia 
passed resolutions — drafted respectively by Jefferson and Madi- 
son — which went so near secession as to be cjuoted on that 
side at a later day. Kentucky distinctly resolved, in 1799, that 
any State might rightfully nullify any act of Congress w^hich 
it resrarded as unconstitutional. 

Thus the bitterness grew worse and worse, till Adams dis- 
missed from his cabinet the friends of Hamilton, calling them a 
" British faction." Hamilton, in turn, intrigued against Adams, 
and in 1800 the vote of South Carolina turned the scale in 
favor of the Republican electors. Jefferson and Burr, the two 
Republican nominees, had an equal number of votes — 'jt^; 
Adams having 65, Pinckney 64, and Jay i. There was no 



344 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

choice, and the decision then went to the House of Representa- 
tives, which took six days to make its election, during which 
time the Constitution underwent such a party strain as has 
only once been equalled since that period. It ended in the 
election of Thomas Jefferson as President, and of Aaron Burr 
as Vice-president, and on March 4, iSor, they were sworn into 
office. 

On the very day of his inauguration Jefferson took a step 
towards what he called simplicity, and what his opponents 
thought vulgarity. We know through an * English traveller, 
John Davis, that, instead of driving with a coach-and-six to be 
inaugurated, the new President rode on horseback to the Capi- 
tol, without even a servant, tied his horse to the fence, and 
walked in. It was partly accidental — he was, at any rate, nego- 
tiating for a four-horse equipage in Virginia — but it was a char- 
acteristic accident. In the same way, thenceforward, instead 
of going with a state procession, at the opening of each Con- 
gress, to read his Message in person, as had hitherto been the 
custom, he sent it in writing. He would have no especial 
levees nor invited guests, but was accessible to any one at any 
hour. He was so unwilling to have his birthday celebrated 
that he concealed it as much as possible. These ways were 
criticised as those of a demagogue. The President was re- 
proached with a desire to conciliate the mob, or, as it was then 
sometimes called — as, for instance, in Mrs. Adams's letters — 
the "mobility." His reason for sending a Message, according 
to that stout Federalist William Sullivan, was because a Speech 
could be answered, and a Message could not ; although Sullivan 
asserts, in almost the next sentence, that Congress was utterly 
subservient to him, and it could therefore have made no differ- 
ence. The discontinuance of formal levees is called by Sulli- 
van " the abolition of all official dignity," and " descending to the 
lowest level." 

Dennie's Portfolio, the best newspaper that had yet ap- 




THOMAS JEFFERSON. 
[Engraved by G. Kruell, from the painting by Gilbert Stuart, owned by T. Jefferson Coolidge, Esq., Boston.] 



THE EARLY AMERICAN PRESIDENTS. 347 

peared in the United States, contained, August 18, 1S04, among 
eulogies of the poems of Burns, and burlesques upon the early 
lyrical effusions of Wordsworth, an imaginary diary, supposed 
to have been picked up near the White House in the previous 
February. In this the President was made to say : " Ordered 
my horse — never ride with a servant — looks proud — mob doesn't 
like it — must gull the boobies. Adams wouldn't bend so — 
would rather lose his place — knew nothing of the world." In 
another place he describes himself as meeting a countryman 
who took him for a Virginia overseer, and who talked politics. 
The countryman asked him to name one man of real character 
in the Democratic party. The President, after some stammer- 
ing, suggested Jefferson, on which the countryman burst into 
a broad laugh, and asked him to enumerate his virtues — would 
he begin with his religion, chastity, courage, or honesty ?— on 
which the President indignantly rode away. " Had he been as 
little as Sammy H. Smith," he adds, " I think I should have 
struck him." Ever since Jefferson's career as Governor of Vir- 
ginia, the charge of personal cowardice had been unreasonably 
familiar. 

The fictitious diary also contains some indecorous references 
to a certain "black Sally," a real or imaginary personage of 
that day whose companionship was thought discreditable to the 
President ; also to the undoubted personal slovenliness of the 
Chief Magistrate — a point in which he showed an almost stud- 
ied antagonism to the scrupulous proprieties of Washington. 
When Mr. Merry, the newly appointed British ambassador, went 
in of^cial costume to be presented to the President at an hour 
previously appointed, he found himself, by his own narrative, 
"introduced to a man as the President of the United States, 
not merely in an undress, but actually standing in slippers down 
at the heels, and both pantaloons, coat, and underclothes indic- 
ative of utter slovenliness and indifference to appearance, and 
in a state of negligence actually studied." The minister went 



348 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

away with the very natural conviction that the whole scene was 
prepared and intended as an insult, not to himself, but to the 
sovereign whom he represented. 

Mr. Merry's inference was probably quite unjust. A man 
may be habitually careless about his costume without meaning 
any harni by it ; and the pre-eminent demagogue of the French 
Revolution, Robespierre, always appeared exquisitely dressed, 
and wore a fresh bouquet every day. Yet all these points of 
costume or propriety were then far weightier matters than we 
can now conceive. The habits of the last century in respect to 
decorum were just receding; men were — for better or worse — 
ceasing to occupy themselves about personal externals, and the 
customary suit of solemn black was only just coming into vogue. 
The old regime was dying, and its disappearance was as con- 
spicuous in England as in France, in America as in England. 
This is easily illustrated. 

If we were to read in some old collection of faded letters a 
woman's animated description of a country visit paid to one 
who seemed the counterpart of Addison's Sir Roger de Cover- 
ley, we should naturally assume that the date and address of 
the letter must be very far away in space and time. Suppose 
that the narrator should tell us of a fine country-house sur- 
rounded by lofty elms forming two avenues, the one leading to 
the high-road, the other to the village church. There are family 
portraits in the hall, a bookcase containing the first edition of 
the Spectator, and a buffet of old plate and rare china. The 
guest remains over Sunday, and her host, wearing wig and 
cocked hat and red cloak, escorts her down the avenue of elms 
through the rural church-yard to the village church. At every 
step they pass villagers who make profound obeisance, and at 
the conclusion of the service the whole congregation remains 
standing until this ancient gentleman and his friends have 
passed down the broad aisle. Who would not fancy this a 
scene from some English hamlet in the days of Queen Anncf* 



THE EARL Y AMERICAN PRESIDENTS. 3^.9 

Yet it all took place in the present century, and in the quiet 
village of Harvard, Massachusetts, little more than thirty miles 
from Boston, and now only noted as the abode of a little Shaker 
community, and the scene of Howells s " Undiscovered Country." 
The narrator was the late Mrs. Josiah Ouincy, and her host was 
Henry Bromfield, elder brother of the well-known benefactor of 
the Boston Athenaeum. He was simply a "survival" of the old 
way of living. He spoke of State Street as King Street, and 
Summer Street as Seven-star Lane, and his dress and manners 
were like his phrases. Such survivals were still to be found, 
here and there all over the country, at the precise time when 
Jefferson became President, and shocked Mr. Merry with his 
morning slippers, and Mr. Sullivan by opening his doors to all 
the world. 

For the rest, Jefferson's way of living in Washington ex- 
hibited a profuse and rather slovenly hospitality, which at last 
left him deeply in debt. He kept open house, had eleven serv- 
ants (slaves) from his plantation, besides a French cook and 
steward and an Irish coachman. His long: dinine-room was 
crowded every day, according to one witness, who tested its 
hospitality for sixteen days in succession ; it was essentially a 
bachelor establishment, he being then a widower, and we hear 
little of ladies among its visitors. There was no etiquette at 
these great dinners; they sat down at four and talked till mid- 
night. The city of Washington was still a frontier settlement, 
in that phase of those outposts when they consist of many 
small cabins and one hotel at which everybody meets. The 
White House was the hotel; there was no "society" anywhere 
else, because no other dwelling had a drawing-room large 
enough to receive it. Pennsylvania Avenue was still an abyss 
of yellow mud, on which nobody could walk, and where car- 
riages were bemired. Gouverneur Morris, of New York, de- 
scribed Washington as the best city in the world for a future 
residence. " We want nothing here," he said, " but houses, 



350 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

cellars, kitchens, well-informed men, amiable women, and other 
little trifles of this kind, to make our city perfect." 

Besides new manners, the new President urged new meas- 
ures ; he would pay off the public debt, which was very wtU, 
though the main instrument by which it was to be paid was the 
Treasury system created by Hamilton. But to aid in doing 
this he would reduce the army and navy to their lowest point, 
which was not so well, although he covered this reduction in 
the case of the army by calling it — in a letter to Nathaniel 
Macon — " a chaste reformation." He pardoned those convicted 
under the Alien and Sedition laws, and he procured the re- 
moval of those officers appointed by President Adams at the 
last moment, and called " Midnight Judges," this being accom- 
plished by a repeal of the law creating them. This repeal was 
an act which seemed to the Federalists unconstitutional, and its 
passage was their last great defeat. Under Jefferson's leader- 
ship the period of fourteen years of residence necessary for nat- 
uralization was reduced to five years. He sent Lewis and 
Clark to penetrate the vast regions west of the Mississippi, and 
encouraged Astor to found a settlement upon the Pacific coast. 
The Constitution was so amended as to provide for the Presi- 
dential election in its present form. The President's hostility 
could not touch the Bank of the United States, as established 
by Hamilton, for it was to exist by its charter till 1811; the 
excise law was early discontinued ; the tariff question had not 
yet become serious, the tendency being, however, to an increase 
of duties. Slavery was occasionally discussed by pamphleteers. 
The officials of the civil service had not grown to be a vast 
army : instead of fifty thousand, there were then but five thou- 
sand, and of those Jefferson removed but thirty-nine. Yet even 
this mild degree of personal interference was severely criticised, 
for party bitterness had not abated. Violent squibs and hand- 
bills were still published; peaceful villages were divided against 
themselves. The late Miss Catharine Sedgwick, whose father 



THE EARL Y AMERICAN PRESIDENTS. 



351 





WASHINGTON IN 1800, 



was Speaker of the House of Representatives, says that in a 
New England town, where she hved in childhood, the gentry 
who resided at one end were mainly Federalists, and the poorer 
citizens at the other end were Democrats. The travelling agent 
for the exchange of political knowledge was a certain aged 
horse, past service, and turned out to graze in the village street. 
He would be seen peacefully pacing one way in the morning, 
his sides plastered with Jeffersonian squibs, and he would return 
at night with these effaced by Federalist manifestoes. 

Handbills and caricatures have alike disappeared; but one 
of the best memorials of the Jeffersonian side of the controversy 
is to be found in a very spicy correspondence carried on in 
1S07 between John Adams and Mercy Warren, and first pub- 
lished in the centennial volume of the Massachusetts Historical 
Society. Mercy Warren was a woman of rare ability and char- 



352 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

acter, the sister of James Otis, the wife of General James War- 
ren, and the author of a history of the American Revolution. 
John Adams, reading this book after his retirement from ofBce, 
took offence at certain phrases, and corresponded with her at 
great length about them, showing in advancing years an un- 
diminished keenness of mind and only an increase of touchy 
egotism. He makes it, for instance, a subject of sincere indig- 
nation when the lady in one case speaks of Franklin and 
Adams instead of Adams and Franklin. Mrs. Warren, on her 
side, shows to the greatest advantage, keeps her temper, and 
gives some keen home-thrusts. She makes it clear, in this cor- 
respondence, how strongly and indeed justly a portion of the 
most intelligent people of Mr. Adams's own State dreaded what 
she calls his " marked and uniform preference to monarchic 
usages;" she brings him to the admission that he hates "demo- 
cratic " government, and likes better such republicanism as that 
of Holland — a nation which, as he himself says, " has no idea of 
any republic but an aristocracy" — and that he counts even Eng- 
land a republic, since a republic is merely " a government of 
more than one." She even quotes against him his own words, 
uttered in moments of excited impulse, recognizing monarchy 
as the probable destiny of the United States. But the most 
striking fact, after all, is that she, a refined and cultivated wom- 
an, accustomed to the best New England society of her time, 
is found dissenting wholly from the Federalist view of Jeffer- 
son. " I never knew," she bravely says, in answer to a sneer 
from Mr. Adams, "that 'my philosophical friend' Mr. Jefferson 
was afraid to do his duty in any instance. But this I know — 
he has dared to do many things for his country for which pos- 
terity will probably bless his memory ; and I hope he will yet, 
by his wisdom, justice, moderation, and energy, long continue 
the blessings of peace in our country, and strengthen the repub- 
lican system to which he has uniformly adhered." Such a trib- 
ute from a woman like Mercy Warren — a woman then nearly 



THE EARLY AMERICAN PRESIDENTS. 



353 



eighty years old, but still showing unimpaired those mental 
powers of which John Adams had before spoken in terms of 




MERCY WARREN. 



almost extravagant praise — is entitled to count for something 
against the bitterness of contemporary politicians. 
• There were now sixteen States, Vermont (1791), Kentucky 

23 



354 HISTORY OF THE U XI TED STATES. 

(1792), Tennessee (1796), having been added to the original 
thirteen. With these was soon associated Ohio (1S02), and then 
no other was added until a vast acquisition of territory made it 
necessary. This was the province of Louisiana, which was ob- 
tained by Jefferson through one of those strokes of glaring in- 
consistency which his opponents called trick, and his admirers 
statesmanship. Monroe had been sent to France to buy the 
Floridas and the island of New Orleans, but he went beyond 
his instructions, and paid fifteen millions (April 30, 1S03) for all 
the vast region then called Louisiana, comprising the island of 
New Orleans and all the continent west of the Mississippi Riv- 
er between the British possessions and what was then Mexico. 
The territory thus obtained was afterwards assumed to have 
extended to the Pacific Ocean, although this was a claim sub- 
ject to much doubt. It was a most important acquisition, which 
more than doubled the original area of the United States, and 
saved it from being hemmed in between English Canada and 
French Florida. But here was a test of those rigid doctrines 
with which Jefferson was identified — of State rights and the 
strict construction of the Constitution. If the resolutions which 
he had drawn up for the State of Kentucky were true, then the 
purchase of Louisiana was wrong, for it was the exercise of a 
power not given by the Constitution, and it strengthened the 
nation enormously at the expense of the original States. Jeffer- 
son sustained it simply on the ground that the people needed 
it, and if they did so, a constitutional amendment would set all 
right. In other words, he violated what he himself had declared 
to be law, and suggested that a new law be passed to confirm 
his action. The new law — in the shape of an amendment to 
the Constitution — was in fact prepared, but never even offered, 
inasmuch as the popular voice ratified the purchase. Thus a 
precedent was created — that of the annexation of new territory 
— which was in accordance with Jefferson's immediate policy, 
but was fatal to his principles. The acquisition of Louisiana 



THE EARLY AMERICAN PRESIDENTS. . 355 

aided greatly in bringing about just that which he liad opposed, 
the subordination of the States to the nation. 

These things would have made enough of party bitterness, 
but what added to it was that parties still turned largely on 
European politics, and every fresh foreign newspaper added to 
the democratic flame. It was now France with which a treaty 
was to be made, and the debate ran almost as high as when Jay 
had negotiated with England, only that the arguments of the 
disputants were now reversed. But here, as in everything dur- 
ing Jefferson's earlier period, success awaited him. The French 
treaty was at length ratified ; the Federalists were defeated all 
along the line. At the end of Jefferson's first term they were 
overwhelmingly beaten in the Presidential election, carrying 
only Connecticut and Delaware, with two electors in Maryland 
— 14 electoral votes in all. Their unsuccessful candidates were 
Charles C. Pinckney and Rufus King; the successful ones were 
Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia, and George Clinton, of New 
York, both having 162 electoral votes, and Clinton taking the 
place of Aaron Burr, the most brilliant man of his time, who 
had now fallen from all public respect by his way of life, had 
made himself odious by shooting Hamilton in a duel, and was 
destined to come near conviction for treason through his project 
of setting up a separate government at the South-west. The 
new President and Vice-president were sworn into office March 
4, 1S05. They had behind them a strong majority in each 
House of Congress, and henceforth the Federalist party was 
only a minority, able and powerful, but destined to death. 

Under the new administration the controlling effect of Eu- 
ropean strife w^as more and more felt in American affairs. 
Napoleon's " Decrees " and the British " Orders in Council " 
were equally disastrous to the commerce of the United States; 
and both nations claimed the right to take seamen out of 
United States vessels. " England," said Jefferson, " seems to 
have become a den of pirates, and France a den of thieves." 



356 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

There was trouble with Spain also, backed by France, about the 
eastern boundaries of Louisiana. There was renewed demand 
for a navy, but the President would only consent to the build- 
ing of certain little gun-boats, much laughed at then and ever 
since. They were to cost less than ten thousand dollars apiece, 
were to be kept on land under cover, and to be launched when- 
ever they were needed, like the boats of our life-saving service ; 
with these the fleets which had fought under Nelson were to 
be resisted. Yet a merely commercial retaliation was favored 
by Jefferson ; and an act was passed to punish England by 
the prohibition of certain English goods. A treaty with that 
nation was made, but was rejected by the President, and all 
tended to increase the bitterness of feeling between the two 
nations. In June, 1S07, the British frigate Leopard took four 
seamen by force from the United States frigate Chesapeake. 
"Never since the battle of Lexington," said Jefferson, "have I 
seen this country in such a state of exasperation as at present." 
Then came that great political convulsion, the Embargo Act 
(December 22, 1807), prohibiting all commerce with all foreign 
countries, and thus instantly crushing all foreign trade which 
the two great European contestants had left. It kindled all the 
fires of hostility between the Federalists and Republicans — who 
had now fairly accepted the name of Democrats, a name bor- 
rowed from France, and fairly forced on them by their oppo- 
nents. The act brought ruin to so many households that it 
might well be at least doubted whether it brought good to any. 
The very children of New England rose up against it, in the 
person of Bryant, who, when a boy of thirteen, wrote in opposi- 
tion to it his first elaborate lay. It was believed by the Federal- 
ists to be aimed expressly at the Eastern States, yet John Quin- 
cy Adams, Senator from Massachusetts, supported it, and then 
resigned, his course being disapproved by his Legislature. He 
it was, however, who informed the President at last that the em- 
bargo could be endured no longer, and got it modified, in 1809, 



THE EARLY AMERICAN PRESIDENTS. 



357 



so as to apply only to England and France. Jefferson con- 
sented reluctantly even to this degree of pressure, but he wrote, 



|i|i|S||iiiiiiSiiii«iiili:iiii»(iffliiiJiiIiii!^ 




AARON IIURR. 



looking back upon the affair in 1816, " I felt the foundations of 
the government shaken under my feet by the New England 
township;" and he always urged thenceforward that the town 



358 HISTORY OF THE U XI TED STATES. 

system organized the voice of the people in a way with which 
no unwieldy county organization, such as prevailed at the South, 
could compete. Yet all but the commercial States sustained 
the embargo, and the Federalist party was left a broken and 
hopeless minority. Jefferson remained strong in popularity. 
His second time had secured a triumphant end to the long 
contest with Tripoli, whose insolent claims were checked by 
the successes of Decatur, and by a treaty (1805). An act had 
also been passed forever prohibiting the African slave-trade 
after January i, 1808. Jefferson was urge.d to become for a 
third time a candidate for the Presidency, but wisely declined 
in favor of his friend Madison. In the election of 1808, 
James Madison, of Virginia, had 122 votes, C. C. Pinckney 47, 
and George Clinton 6, Mr. Madison being therefore elected ; 
while on the vote for Vice-president George Clinton had a 
smaller majority. The third Chief Magistrate of the United 
States thus retired to private life after a career which has in- 
fluenced American institutions to this day more profoundly 
than that of any other President. 

Jefferson was a man full of thoughts and of studious pur- 
poses ; trustful of the people, distrustful of the few ; a generous 
friend, but a vehement and unscrupulous foe ; not so much 
deliberately false as without a clear sense of truth ; courageous 
for peace, but shrinking and vacillating in view of war; ignorant 
of his own limitations ; as self-confident in financial and com- 
mercial matters, of which he knew little, as in respect to the 
principles of republican government, about which he showed 
more foresight than any man of his time. He may have under- 
rated the dangers to which the nation might be exposed from 
ignorance and vice, but he never yielded, on the other hand, to 
the cowardice of culture ; he never relaxed his faith in the per- 
manence of popular government or in the high destiny of man. 

Meanwhile John Adams, on his farm in Quincy, had been 
superintending his haymakers with something as near to peace 



THE EARLY AMERICAN PRESIDENTS. 359 

of mind as a deposed President can be expected to attain. He 
was not a person of eminent humility, nor is it usually agreeable 
to a public man when his correspondence ceases to be counted 
by the thousand, and his letters shrink to two a week. His 
high-minded wife, more cordially accepting the situation, wrote 
with sincere satisfaction of skimming milk in her dairy at five 
o'clock in the morning. Each had perhaps something to say, 
when Jefferson was mentioned, about " Caesar with a Senate at 
his heels," but it did not prevent the old friendship with Czesar 
from reviving in later life. Jefferson had written to Washing- 
ton long before, that even Adams's " apostasy to hereditary 
monarchy and nobility " had not alienated them ; Adams saw 
in Jefferson, as time went on, the friend and even political ad- 
viser of his own son. Old antagonisms faded ; old associations 
grew stronger; and the two aged men floated on, like two ships 
becalmed at nightfall, that drift together into port, and cast 
anchor side by side. 



XV. 

THE SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE. 

JEFFERSON'S period of office lasted technically for eight 
years, but it is not wholly incorrect to estimate, as Mr. 
Parton suggests, that it endured for nearly a quarter of a 
century. Madison's and Monroe's administrations were but the 
continuation of it. The fourth and fifth Presidents had, indeed, 
so much in common that it was about an even chance which 
should take the Presidency first. Both had long been friends 
of Jefferson; both had something to do with reconciling him to 
the United States Constitution, which he had at first opposed. 
He himself would have rather preferred Monroe for his imme- 
diate successor, but the Legislature of Virginia pronounced in 
favor of Madison, who, like the two others, was a native of that 
then powerful State. It really made little difference which pre- 
ceded. Josiah Quincy, in a famous speech, designated them 
simply as James I. and James II. The two were alike Jeffer- 
sonian ; their administrations moved professedly in the line in- 
dicated by their predecessor, and the success of his policy must 
be tested in a degree by that of theirs. Both inherited some- 
thing of his unpopularity with the Federalists, but Madison 
partially lived it down, and Monroe saw nearly the extinction of 
it. The Jeffersonian policy may, therefore, fairly be judged, not 
alone by its early storms, but by the calm which at last followed. 
James Madison had been Secretary of State for eight years 
under Jefferson, and had not only borne his share earlier than 



THE SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE. 36 1 

this in public affairs, but liad furnished a plan which formed the 
basis of the Constitution, and had afterwards aided Hamilton 
and Jay in writing The Federalist in support of it. For these 
reasons, and because he was the last survivor of those who 
signed the great act of national organization, he was called, be- 
fore his death, " The Father of the Constitution." He was a 
man of clear head, modest manners, and peaceful disposition. 
His bitter political opponents admitted that he was honorable, 
well informed, and even, in his own way, patriotic ; not mean 
or malignant. As to his appearance, he is described by one of 
these opponents, William Sullivan, as one who had "a calm ex- 
pression, a penetrating blue eye, and who looked like a think- 
ing man." In figure, he was small and rather stout; he was 
partially bald, wore powder in his hair, and dressed in black, 
without any of Jefferson's slovenliness. In speech he was slow 
1 and grave. Mrs. Madison was a pleasing woman, twenty years 
i younger than himself, and they had no children. 

Their arrival brought an immediate change in the manners 
of the President's house ; they were both fond of society and 
ceremony, and though the new President claimed to be the most 
faithful of Jeffersonians, he found no difficulty in restoring the 
formal receptions which his predecessor had disused. These 
levees were held in what a British observer of that day called 
the " President's palace," a building which the same observer 
(Gleig) afterwards described as "small, incommodious, and 
plain," although its walls were the same with those of the pres- 
ent White House, only the interior having been burned by the 
British in the war soon to be described. Such as it was, it was 
thrown open at these levees, which every one was free to attend, 
while music played, and the costumes of foreign ambassadors 
gave, as now, some gayety to the scene. Mrs. Madison, accord- 
ing to a keen observer, Mrs. Quincy, wore on these occasions 
her carriage dress, the same in which she appeared on Sunday 
at the Capitol, where religious services w^re then held — " a pur- 



362 HISTORY OF THE U XI TED STATES. 

pie velvet pelisse, and a hat trimmed with ermnie. A very ele- 
gant costume," adds this feminine critic, " but not, I thought, 
appropriate to a lady receiving company at home." At another 
time Mr. and Mrs. Quincy dined at the President's house, " in 
the midst of the enemy's camp," they being the only Federalists 
among some five -and -twenty Democrats. The house, Mrs. 
Quincy tells us, was richly but incongruously furnished, " not of 
a piece, as we ladies say." On this occasion Mrs. Madison wore 
black velvet, with a very rich head-dress of coquelicot and gold, 
having on a necklace of the same color. A^: another time Mrs. 
Quincy went by invitation with her children, and was shown 
through the front rooms. Meeting the lady of the house, she 
apologized for the liberty, and Mrs. Madison said, gracefully, 
"It is as much your house as it is mine, ladies." The answer 
has a certain historic value ; it shows that the spirit of Jefferson 
had already wrought a change in the direction of democratic 
feeling. Such a remark would hardly have been made by Mrs. 
Washington, or even by Mrs. Adams. 

The tone of society in Washington had undoubtedly some- 
thing of the coarser style which then prevailed in all countries. 
Men drank more heavily, wrangled more loudly, and there was a 
good deal of what afterwards came to be known as " plantation 
manners." The mutual bearing of Congressmen was that of 
courtesy, tempered by drunkenness and duelling; and it was 
true then, as always, that every duel caused ten new quarrels 
for each one that it decided. When Josiah Quincy, then the 
leader of the Federalists in Congress, made his famous speech 
against the invasion of Canada (January 5, 18 13), and Henry 
Clay, then Speaker of the House, descended from the chair ex- 
pressly to force him to the alternative of " a duel or disgrace " — 
as avowed by one of his friends to Mr. Quincy — it was not held 
to be anything but honorable action, and only the high moral 
courage of Mr. Quincy enabled him to avoid the alternative. 
On a later occasion, Mr. Grundy, of Tennessee, having to an- 




JAMES MADISON. 
[Engraved by G. Kruell, from the painting by Gilbert Stuart, owned by T. Jefferson Coolidge, Esq., Boston.] 



THE SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE. 365 

swer another speech by Mr. Quincy, took pains to explain to 
him privately that though he must abuse him as a representa- 
tive Federalist or else lose his election, he would endeavor to 
bestow the abuse like a gentleman. " Except Tim Pickering," 
said this frank Tennessean, " there is not a man in the United 
States so perfectly hated by the people of my district as your- 
self. By I must abuse you, or I shall never get re-elected. 

I will do it, however, genteelly. I will not do it as that 

fool Clay did it, strike so hard as to hurt myself. But abuse 
you I must." Seeing by this explanation what was the tone of 
Congressional manners when putting on gentility, we can form 
some conception of what they were on those more frequent oc- 
casions when they were altogether ungenteel. 

But the amenities of Mrs. Madison and the orentilities of Mr. 
Grundy were alike interrupted by the excitements of war — " the 
war of 18 1 2," habitually called "the late war" until there was 
one still later. For this contest, suddenly as it came at last, 
there were years of preparation. Long had the United States 
suffered the bitter experience of being placed between two con- 
tending nations, neither of which could be made into a friend, or 
easily reached as an enemy. Napoleon with his " Decrees," the 
British government with its " Orders in Council," had in turn 
preyed upon American commerce, and it was scarce reviving 
from the paralysis of Jefferson's embargo. At home, men were 
divided as to the remedy, and the old sympathies for France and 
for England re-appeared on each side. Unfortunately for the 
Federalists, while they were wholly right in many of their criti- 
cisms on the manner in which the war came about, they put 
themselves in the wrong as to its main feature. We can now 
see that in their just wrath against Napoleon they would have 
let the nation remain in a position of perpetual childhood and 
subordination before England. No doubt there were various 
points at issue in the impending contest, but the most important 
one, and the only one that remained in dispute all through the 



366 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

war, was that of the right of search and impressment — the Eng- 
Hsh claiming the right to visit American vessels, and impress 
into the naval service any sailors who appeared to be British 
subjects. The one great object of the war of 1812 was to get 
rid of this insolent and degrading practice. 

It must be understood that this was not a question of re- 
claiming deserters from the British navy, for the seamen in ques- 
tion had very rarely belonged to it. There existed in England 
at that time an outrage on civilization, now abandoned, called 
impressment, by which any sailor and many, who were not sail- 
ors could be seized and compelled to serve in the navy. The 
horrors of the " press-gang," as exhibited in the sea-side towns of 
England, have formed the theme of many novels. It was bad 
enough at home, but when applied on board the vessels of a na- 
tion w^ith which England was at peace, it became one of those 
outrages which only proceed from the strong to the weak, and 
are never reciprocated. Lord Collingwood said well, in one of 
his letters, that England would not submit to such an aggression 
for an hour. Merely to yield to visitation for such a purpose 
was a confession of national weakness ; but the actual case was 
far worse than this. Owing to the similarity of language, it was 
always difficult to distinguish between English and American 
seamen ; and the temptation was irresistible to the visiting offi- 
cer, anxious for the enlargement of his own crew, to give Eng- 
land the benefit of the doubt. The result was that an English 
lieutenant, or even midshipman, once on board an American 
ship, was, in the words of the English writer Cobbett, " at once 
accuser, witness, judge, and captor," and we have also Cobbett's 
statement of the consequences. " Great numbers of Americans 
have been impressed," he adds, " and are now in our navy. . . . 
That many of these men have died on board our ships, that 
many have been worn out in the service, there is no doubt. 
Some obtain their release through the application of the Ameri- 
can Consul, and of these the sufferings have been in many in- 



■■•"/////i 




THE SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE. 369 

stances very great. There have been instances where men have 
thus got free after having been flogged through the fleet for 
desertion." Between 1797 and 1801 more than two thousand 
applications for impressed seamen were made through the Amer- 
ican Minister; and of these only one- twentieth were proved 
to be British subjects, though nearly one -half were retained 
for further proof. When the Hornet captured the British 
sloop Peacock, the victors found on board three American sea- 
men who had been forced, by holding pistols at their heads, to 
fight against their own countrymen. Four American seamen 
on the British ship Actcea were ordered five dozen lashes, then 
four dozen, then two dozen, then kept in irons three months, for 
refusing to obey orders under similar circumstances. There 
was nothing new about the grievance; it had been the subject 
of indignant negotiation since 1789. In 1796 Timothy Picker- 
ing, Secretary of State, a representative Federalist, had de- 
nounced the practice of search and impressment as the sacrifice 
of the rights of an independent nation, and lamented " the long 
and fruitless attempts" to correct it. In 1806 the merchants of 
Boston had called upon the general government to "assert our 
rights and support the dignity of the United States;" and the 
merchants of Salem had offered to " pledge their lives and prop- 
erties " in support of necessary measures of redemption. Yet 
it shows the height of party feeling that when, in 181 2, Mr. 
Madison's government finally went to war for these very rights, 
the measure met with the bitterest opposition from the whole 
Federalist party, and from the commercial States generally. A 
good type of the Federalist opposition on this particular point 
is to be found in the pamphlets of John Lowell. 

John Lowell was the son of the eminent Massachusetts judge 
of that name ; he was a well-educated lawyer, who was president 
of the Massachusetts Agricultural Society, and wrote under the 
name of " A New England Farmer." In spite of the protests 
offered half a dozen years before by his own neighbors, he de- 

24 



370 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

clared the whole outcry against impressment to be a device of 
Mr. Madison's party. The nation, he said, was " totally opposed 
to a war for the purpose of protecting British seamen against 
their own sovereign." The whole matter at issue, he asserted, 
was " the protection of renegadoes and deserters from the Brit- 
ish navy." He argued unflinchingly for the English right of 
search, called it a " consecrated " right, maintained that the alle- 
giance of British subjects was perpetual, and that no residence 
in a foreign country could absolve them. He held that every 
sailor born in Great Britain, whether naturalized in America or 
not, should be absolutely excluded from American ships ; and 
that, until this was done, the right to search American vessels 
and take such sailors out was the only restraint on the abuse. 
He was a man of great ability and public spirit, and yet he held 
views which now seem to have renounced all national self-re- 
spect. While such a man, with a large party behind him, took 
this position, it must simply be said that the American republic 
had not yet asserted itself to be a nation. Soon after the Revo- 
lution, when some one spoke of that contest to Franklin as the 
war for independence, he said, " Say rather the war of the Rev- 
olution; the war for independence is yet to be fought." The 
war of 1812 was just the contest he described. 

To this excitement directed against the war, the pulpit very 
largely contributed, the chief lever applied by the Federalist 
clergy being found in the atrocities of Napoleon. " The chief- 
tain of Europe, drunk with blood, casts a look upon us ; he 
raises his voice, more terrible than the midnight yell of sav- 
ages at the doors of our forefathers." These melodramatic 
words are from a sermon, once famous, delivered by Rev. Dan- 
iel Parish, of By field, Massachusetts, on Fast Day, iSio. Else- 
where he says : " Would you establish those in the first offices 
of the land who will poison the hearts of your children with 
infidelity, who will harness them in the team of Hollanders and 
Germans and Swiss and Italians to draw the triumphal car of 



THE SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE. 37 1 

Napoleon ? Are you nursing your sons to be dragged into his 
armies?" The chmax was reached when one pulpit orator 
wound up his appeal by asking his audience if they were ready 
to wear wooden shoes, in allusion to the sabots of the French 
peasants. 

A curious aspect of the whole affair was the firm convic- 
tion of the Federalists that they themselves were utterly free 
from all partisan feeling, and that what they called the " Baleful 
Demon, Party," existed only on the other side. For the Demo- 
crats to form Jacobin societies was an outrage; but the " Wash- 
ington Benevolent Societies " of the Federalists were claimed 
to be utterly non-political^ though they marched with banners, 
held quarterly meetings, and were all expected to vote one way. 
At one of their gatherings, in 1789, there was a company of 
" School-boy Federalists " to the number of two hundred and 
fifty, uniformed in blue and white, and wearing Washington's 
Farewell Address in red morocco around their necks. It was 
a sight hardly to be paralleled in the most excited election of 
these days ; yet the Federalists stoutly maintained that there 
was nothing partisan about it ; the other side was partisan. 
They admired themselves for their width of view and their 
freedom from prejudice, and yet they sincerely believed that 
the mild and cautious Madison, who would not have declared 
war with England unless forced into it by others, was plotting 
to enslave his* own nation for the benefit of France. The 
very names of their pamphlets show this. One of John Low- 
ell's bears on the title-page " Perpetual War the policy of Mr. 
Madison . . . the important and interesting subject of a con- 
script militia, and an immense standing army of guards and 
spies under the name of a local volunteer corpsT The Feder- 
alist leaders took distinctly the ground that they should refuse 
to obey a conscription law to raise troops fof the conquest of 
Canada; and when that very questionable measure failed by 
one vote in the Senate, the nation may have escaped a serious 



372 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

outbreak. Had the law passed and been enforced, William Sul- 
livan ominously declares, " No doubt the citizens would have 
armed, and might have marched, but not, it is believed, to Can- 
ada." This was possibly overstated ; but the crisis thus arising 
might have been a formidable matter. 

It might, indeed, have been far more dangerous than the 
Hartford Convention of 1814, which was, after all, only a peace- 
able meeting of some two dozen honest men, with George Cabot 
at their head — men of whom very few had even a covert pur- 
pose of dissolving the Union, but who were driven to something 
very near desperation by the prostration of their commerce and 
the defencelessness of their coast. They found themselves be- 
tween the terror of a conscription in New England and the 
outraoje of an invasion of Canada. Thev found the President 
calling in his Message of November 4, 181 2, for new and mys- 
terious enactments against " corrupt and perfidious intercourse 
with the enemy, not amounting to treason," and they did not feel 
quite sure that this might not end in the guillotine or the lamp- 
post. They saw what were called " the horrors of Baltimore " 
in a mob where the blood of Revolutionary officers had been 
shed in that city under pretence of suppressing a newspaper. 
No one could tell whither these things were leading, and they 
could at least protest. The protest will always be remarkable 
from the skill with which it turned against Jefferson and Madi- 
son the dangerous States-rights doctrines of their own injurious 
Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. The Federalist and Dem- 
ocratic parties had completely shifted ground ; and we can now 
see that the Hartford Convention really strengthened the tra- 
ditions of the Union by showing that the implied threat of se- 
cession was a game at which two could play. 

It must be remembered, too, in estimating the provocation 
which led to this famous convention, that during all this time 
the commercial States were most unreasonably treated. In the 
opinion of Judge Story, himself a moderate Republican and a 



THE SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE. 373 

member of Congress, " New England was expected, so far as 
the Republicans were concerned, to do everything and have 
nothing. They were to obey, but not to be trusted." Their 
commerce, which had furnished so largely the supplies for the 
nation, was viewed by a great many not merely with indiffer- 
ence, but with real dislike. Jefferson, whose views had more in- 
fluence than those of any ten other men, still held to his narrow 
Virginia-planter opinion that a national business must somehow 
be an evil ; and it was hard for those whose commerce his em- 
bargo had ruined to be patient while he rubbed his hands and 
assured them that they w^ould be much better off without any 
ships. When the war of 181 2 was declared, the merchants of 
Boston and Salem had — as it was estimated by Mr. Isaac P. 
Davis, quoted in the memoirs of Mrs. Quincy — twenty million 
dollars' worth of property on the sea and in British ports. The 
war sacrificed nearly all of it, and the losers were expected to 
be grateful. In a letter to the Legislature of New Hampshire, 
four years before (August, 1808), Jefferson had calmly recom- 
mended to the people of that region to retire from the seas and 
" to provide for themselves [ourselves] those comforts and con- 
veniences of life for which it would be unwise ever to recur to 
other countries." Moreover, it was argued, the commercial 
States were almost exclusively the sufferers by the British intru- 
sions upon American vessels ; and if they did not think it a case 
for war, why should it be taken up by the States which were not 
hurt by it ? Again, the commercial States had yielded to the 
general government the right of receiving customs duties and of 
national defence, on the express ground of receiving protection 
in return. Madison had pledged himself — as he was reminded 
in the once famous " Rockingham County [New Hampshire] 
address," penned by young Daniel Webster — to give the nation 
a navy ; and it had resulted in Mr. Jefferson's hundred and fifty 
little gun-boats, and some twenty larger vessels. As for the 
army, it consisted at this time of about three thousand men all 



374 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

told. The ablest men in the President's cabinet — Gallatin and 
Pinkney — were originally opposed to the war. The only mem- 
ber of that body who had any personal knowledge of military 
matters was Colonel James Monroe, Secretary of State ; and it 
was subsequently thought that' he knew just enough to be in 
the way. Nevertheless, the war was declared, June i8, 1812 — 
declared reluctantly, hesitatingly, but at last courageously, l^ive 
days after the declaration the. British " Orders in Council," 
which had partly caused it, were revoked; but hostilities went on. 
In the same autumn Madison was re-elected. President, receiving 
128 electoral votes against 89 for De Witt Clinton; Elbridge 
Gerry, of Massachusetts, being chosen Vice-president. A suffi- 
cient popular verdict w^as thus given, and the war was continued. 
In its early period much went wrong. British and Indians 
ravaged the North-western frontier; General Hull invaded Can- 
ada in vain, and finally surrendered Detroit (August 15, 181 2). 
He was condemned by court-martial, and sentenced to be shot, 
but was pardoned because of his Revolutionary services ; and 
much has since been written in his vindication, making it alto- 
gether probable that he was simply made the scapegoat of an 
inefficient administration. To the surprise of every one, it was 
upon the sea, not the land, that the United States proved emi- 
nently successful, and the victory of the Constitution over the 
Giterrih'e was the first of a long line of triumphs. The num- 
ber of British war vessels captured during the three years of 
the war was 56, with 880 cannon ; the number of American war 
vessels only 25, with 350 guns; and there were, besides these, 
thousands of merchant-vessels taken on both sides by privateers. 
But these mere statistics tell nothing of the excitement of those 
picturesque victories which so long thrilled the heart of every 
American school-boy with the conviction that this nation was 
the peer of the proudest upon the seas. Yet the worst predic- 
tions of the Federalists did not exaggerate the injury done by 
the war to American commerce ; and the highest expectations 



THE SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE, 375 

of the other party did no more than justice to the national pres- 
tige gained by the successes of the American navy. It is fairly 
to be remembered to the credit of the Federalists, however, that 
but for their urgent appeals there would have been no navy, 
and that it was created only by setting aside Jefferson's pet theo- 
ries of sea defence. The Federalists could justly urge, also, that 
the merchant-service was the only nursery of seamen, and that 
with its destruction the race of American sailors would die out — 
a prediction which the present day has seen almost fulfilled. 

But, for the time being, the glory of the American navy 
was secure ; and even the sea-fights hardly equalled the fame of 
Perry's victory on Lake Erie, immortalized by two phrases, 
Lawrence's " Don't give up the ship," which Perry bore upon 
his flag, and Perry's own brief despatch, " We have met the 
enemy, and they are ours." Side by side with this came Harri- 
son's land victories over the Indians and Engrlish in the North- 
west Tecumseh, who held the rank of brigadier-general in the 
British army, had, with the aid of his brother, " the Prophet," 
united all the Indian tribes in a league. His power w^as broken 
by Harrison in the battle of Tippecanoe (November 7, 181 1), 
and finally destroyed in that of the Thames, in Canada (Octo- 
ber 5, 181 3), where Tecumseh fell. 

But the war, from the first, yielded few glories to either side 
by land. The Americans were still a nation of woodsmen and 
sharp-shooters, but they had lost the military habit, and they had 
against them the veterans of Wellington, and men who boasted 
— to Mrs. Peter, of Washington — that they had not slept under 
a roof for seven years. Even with such men, the raid on the 
city of Washington by General Ross was a bold thing — to 
march with four thousand men sixty miles into an enemy's 
country, burn its Capitol, and retreat. Had the Americans re- 
newed the tactics of Concord and Lexington, and fought from 
behind trees and under cover of brick walls, the British com- 
mander's losses might have been frightful ; but to risk a pitched 



376 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

battle was to leave themselves helpless if defeated. The utter 
rout of the Americans at Bladensburg left Washington to fall 
defenceless into the hands of the enemy. The accounts are 
still somewhat confused, but the British statement is that, be- 
fore entering the city, General Ross sent in a flag of truce, 
meaning to levy a contribution, as from a conquered town ; 
and the flag of truce being fired upon, the destruction of the 
town followed. Washington had then less than a thousand 
houses ; the British troops set fire to the unfinished Capitol 
with the Library of Congress, to the Treasury Buildings, the 
Arsenal, and a few private dwellings. At the President's house 
— according to their own story, since doubted — they found din- 
ner ready, devoured it, and then set the house on fire. Mr. 
Madison -sent a messenger to his wife to bid her flee. She 
wrote to her sister, ere going, "Our kind friend Mr. Carroll has 
come to hasten my departure, and is in a very bad humor with 
me because I insist on waiting till the large picture of General 
Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from 
the wall." • She finally secured it, put it into the hands of two 
gentlemen passing by, Mr. Jacob Barker and Mr. De Peyster, 
and went off in her carriage with her sister, Mrs. Cutts. The 
Federalist papers made plenty of fun of her retreat, and Mr. 
Lossing has preserved a fragment of one of their ballads in 
which she is made to say to the President, in the style of John 
Gilpin, 

" Sister Cutts and Cutts and I, 

And Cutts's children three, 
Shall in the coach, and you shall ride 

On horseback after we." 

But, on the whole, the lady of the Presidential " palace " carried 
off more laurels from Washington than most American men. 

The news of the burning of Washington was variously re- 
ceived in England: the British Annual Rcoisier called it "a 
return to the times of barbarism," and the London Times saw 



THE SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE. 2>77 

in it, on the contrary, the disappearance of the American repub- 
lic, which it called by the withering name of an "association." 
" That ill-organized association is on the eve of dissolution, and 
the world is speedily to be delivered of the mischievous example 
of the existence of a government founded on democratic rebell- 
ion." But the burning had, on the contrary, just the opposite 
effect from this. After Washington had fallen, Baltimore seemed 
an easy prey; but there was a great rising of the people; the 
British army was beaten off — the affair turning largely on the 
gallant defence of Fort Mc Henry by Colonel George Armistead 
— and General Ross was killed. It was at this time that Key's 
lyric " The Star-spangled Banner " was written, the author be- 
ing detained on board the cartel-ship Minden during the bom- 
bardment. Before this there had been various depredations and 
skirmishes along the coast of Maine, and a courageous repulse 
of the British at Stonington, Connecticut. Afterwards came 
the well-fought battle of'Lundy's Lane, and the closing victory 
of New Orleans, fought after the treaty of peace had been actu- 
ally signed, and unexpectedly leaving the final laurels of the 
war in the hands of the Americans. 

After this battle an English officer visiting the field saw 
within a few hundred yards " nearly a thousand bodies, all ar- 
rayed in British uniforms," and heard from the American oi^cer 
in command the statement that the American loss had consist- 
ed only of eight men killed and fourteen wounded. The loss 
of the English was nearly twenty -one hundred in killed and 
wounded, including two general of^cers. A triumph so over- 
whelming restored some feeling of military self-respect, sorely 
needed after the disasters at Washington. " There were," says 
the Federalist William Sullivan, "splendid processions, bonfires, 
and illuminations, as though the independence of the country 
had been a second time achieved." Such, indeed, was the feel- 
ing, and with some reason. Franklin's war for independence 
was at an end. The battle took place January 8, 1815, but the 



378 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

treaty of peace had been signed at Ghent on the day before 
Christmas. The terms agreed upon said not one word about 
impressment or the right of search, but the question had been 
practically settled by the naval successes of the United States; 




FRANCIS SCOTT KEY AT SEVENTEEN. 
[I'lom a photograph owned by his daughter, Mrs. G. H. Pendleton.] 

and so great were the rejoicings on the return of peace that 
even this singular omission seemed of secondary importance. 

The verdict of posterity upon the war of 1812 may be said 
to be this : that there was ample ground for it, and that it com- 
pleted the work of the Revolution ; and yet that it was the im- 



1/ 

^'.^ THE SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE. 379 

y. mediate product of a few ambitious men, whose aims and princi- 
ples were not really so high as were those of many who opposed 
the war. The outrageous impressment of American seamen 
touched a point of national pride, and justly; while the United 
States submitted to this it certainly could not be called an in- 
dependent nation ; and the abuse was in fact ended by the 
war, even though the treaty of peace was silent. On the other 
side, the dread entertained of Napoleon by the Federalists was 
perfectly legitimate ; and this, too, time has justified. But this 
peril was really far less pressing than the other: the United 
States needed more to be liberated from the domineerine atti- 
tude of England than from the remoter tyranny of Napoleon, 
and it was therefore necessary to reckon with England first. 
In point of fact, the Federalists did their duty in action ; the 
commonwealth of Massachusetts furnished during those three 
years more soldiers than any other; and the New England 
States, which opposed the war, sent more men into the field 
than the Southern States, which brought on the contest. Un- 
fortunately the world remembers words better than actions — 
litem scripta manct — and the few questionable phrases of the 
Hartford Convention are now more familiar in memory than 
the fourteen thousand men whom Massachusetts raised in 18 14, 
or the two millions of dollars she paid for bounties. 

The rest of Mr. Madison's administration was a career of 
peace. Louisiana had long since (April 30, 181 2) become a 
State of the Union, and Indiana was also admitted (December 
II, 1 81 6). An act was passed, under the leadership of Mr. 
Lowndes, of South Carolina, providing for the payment, in in- 
stalments of ten millions of dollars annually, of the national 
debt of one hundred and twenty millions. Taxes were reduced, 
the tariff was slightly increased, and in April, 18 16, a national 
bank was chartered for a term of twenty years. Here, as in 
some other matters, at least one of the parties proved to have 
chanofed sfround, and the Democratic Republican newspapers 



\' 



380 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

began eagerly to reprint Hamilton's arguments for a bank — 
arguments which they had formerly denounced and derided. 
To the Federalists the passage of the bank act was a complete 
triumph, and while their own party disappeared, they could feel 
that some of its principles survived. A national bank was their 
policy, not that of Jefferson ; and Jefferson and Madison had, 
moreover, lived to take up those theories of a strong national 
government which they had formerly called monarchical and 
despotic. The Federalists had indeed come equally near to 
embracing the extreme States-rights doctrines which their op- 
ponents had laid down ; but the laws of physical perspective 
seem to be reversed in moral perspective, so that our own 
change of position seems to us insignificant, while an equal ,l. 
change on the other side looks conspicuous and important. 
Be this as it may, Mr. Madison's administration closed in peace, 
partly the peace of good-nature, partly of fatigue. The usual_^ ^ 
nominations were made for the Presidency' by the Congressional 
caucuses, but when it came to the voting it was almost all one 
way. The only States choosing Federalist electors were Mas- 
sachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware. James Monroe — Josiah 
Quincy's "James the Second" — had 183 electoral votes, against 
34 for Rufus King, so that four years more of yet milder Jeffer- 
sonianism were secured. The era of bitterness had passed, and 
the " era of good feeling " was at hand. 



XVI. 

THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING. 

MANY Presidents of the United States have served their 
country by remaining at Washington, but probably James 
Monroe was the only one who ever accomplished great good by 
ofoins: on an excursion. Few battles in the Revolution were of 
so much benefit to the nation as the journey which, in 1817, 
the President decided to undertake. There were two especial 
reasons for this beneficent result: the tour reconciled the peo- 
ple to the administration, and it reconciled the administration 
to what seemed the really alarming growth of the people. 

The fact that Monroe was not generally held to be a very 
great man enhanced the value of this expedition. He had been 
an unfortunate diplomatist, retrieving his failures by good-luck ; 
as a soldier, he had blundered at Washington, and yet had re- 
tained enough of confidence to be talked of as probable com- 
mander of a Canadian invasion. All this was rather advan- 
tageous. It is sometimes a good thing when a ruler is not 
personally eminent enough to obscure his office. In such a 
case, what the man loses the office may gain. Wherever Wash- 
ington went he was received as a father among grateful chil- 
dren ; Adams had his admirers, Jefferson his adorers ; Madison 
had carried through a war which, if not successful, was at least 
a drawn game. All these, had they undertaken what play-actors 
call " starring in the provinces," would have been received as 
stars, not as officials. Their applauses would have been given 



382 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

to the individual, not the President. But when Monroe trav- 
elled, it was simply the Chief Magistrate of the nation who met 
the eyes of men. He was not a star, but a member of the 
company, a stock actor, one of themselves. In the speeches 
with which he was everywhere received there was very little 
said about his personality ; it was the head of the nation who 
was welcomed. Thus stripped of all individual prestige, the 
occasion appealed to every citizen. For the first time the peo- 
ple of the United States met their President as such, and felt 
that they were a nation. 

It was at the end of sixteen years of strife — political strife 
more bitter than can easily be paralleled in these calmer days. 
The result of this contest may in some respects have been 
doubtful, but on one point at least it was clear. It had extin- 
guished the colonial theory of government, and substituted the 
national. Hamilton and the Federalists, with all their high 
qualities, had still disbelieved in all that lay beyond the domain 
of experience. But experience, as Coleridge said, is like the 
stern-lights of a ship, illumining only the track already passed 
over. Jefferson, with all his faults, had steered for the open 
sea. Madison's war had impoverished the nation, but had saved 
its self-respect. Henceforward the American flag was that of 
an independent people — a people ready to submit to nothing, 
even from England, which England would not tolerate in re- 
turn. And it so happened that all the immediate honor of this 
increased self-respect belonged, or seemed to belong, to the party 
in power. Jefferson was the most pacific of men, except Madi- 
son ; both dreaded a standing army, and shrank with reluctance 
from a navy; yet the laurels of both arms of the service, such 
as they were, went to Madison and Jefferson. The Federalists, 
who had begged for a navy, and had threatened to raise an 
army on their own account, now got no credit for either. That 
party held, on the whole, the best educated, the most high-mind- 
ed, the most solvent part of the nation, yet it had been wrecked 



THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING. 383 

by its own want of faith. When in the Electoral College Mon- 
roe had 183 votes, against 34 for Rufus King, it was plain that 
the contest was at an end, and that the nation was ready to be 
soothed. Monroe was precisely the sedative to be applied, and 
his journey was the process of application. 

So much for the people ; but there were also anxieties to be 
quieted among the nation's statesmen. Not only did the peo- 
ple need to learn confidence in their leaders, but the leaders in 
the people. It was not that republican government itself was on 
trial, but that its scale seemed so formidable. Nobody doubted 
that it was a thing available among a few mountain communi- 
ties, like those of Switzerland. What even the Democratic 
statesmen of that day doubted — and they had plenty of reason 
for the fear — was the possibility of applying self-government to 
the length and breadth of a continent peopled by many millions 
of men. They were not dismayed by the principle, but by its 
application ; not by the philosophy, but the geography. Wash- 
ington himself, we know, was opposed to undertaking the own- 
ership of the Mississippi River ; and Monroe, when a member 
of the Virginia Convention, had argued against the adoption 
of the United States Constitution for geographical reasons. 
" Consider," he said, " the territory lying between the Atlantic 
Ocean and the Mississippi. Its extent far exceeds that of the 
German Empire. It is larger than any territory that ever was 
under any one free government. It is too extensive to be 
governed but by a despotic monarchy." This was the view of 
James Monroe in 1788, at a time when he could have little 
dreamed of ever becoming President. He was heard with re- 
spect, for he had been one of the Virginia committee-men who 
had transferred the North-western lands to the United States 
government, and he was one of the few who had personally vis- 
ited them. Yet he had these fears, and the worst of the alarm 
was that it had some foundation. But for the unexpected alli- 
ances of railway and telegraph, does anybody believe that Maine, 



384 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Louisiana, and California would to-day form part of the same 
nation ? In the mean time, while waiting for those mighty 
coadjutors, the journey of Mr. Monroe relieved anxiety in a 
very different manner, by revealing the immense strength to 
which the national feeling had already grown. At any rate, 
after this experience he expressed no more solicitude. In his 
message on internal improvements, written five years after his 
journey, he described the American system of government as 
one " capable of expansion over a vast territory." 

Monroe himself was now fifty-nine years old, and form.ed in 
physical appearance a marked contrast to the small size and 
neat, compact figure of his predecessor. He was six feet high, 
broad-shouldered, and rather raw-boned, with grayish-blue eyes, 
whose frank and pleasing expression is often mentioned by the 
writers of the period, and sometimes cited in illustration of Jef- 
ferson's remark that Monroe was "a man whose soul mi^ht be 
turned inside out without discovering a blemish to the world." 
He was dignified and courteous, but also modest, and even shy, 
so that his prevailing air was that of commonplace strength and 
respectable mediocrity. After all the political excitements of 
the past dozen years, nothing could be more satisfactory than 
this. People saw in him a plain Virginia farmer addressing au- 
diences still mainly agricultural. Ralph Waldo Emerson once 
said to me, when looking for the first time on John P. Hale, of 
New Hampshire, then at the height of a rather brief eminence: 
" What an average man he is ! He looks just like five hundred 
other men. That must be the secret of his power." It was 
precisely thus with Monroe. He had in his cabinet men of 
talents far beyond his own — Adams, Calhoun, Crawford, Wirt; 
Jefferson and Madison yet lived, his friends and counsellors; 
Jackson, Clay, Webster, and Benton were just coming forward 
into public life ; but none of all these gifted men could have 
re-assured the nation by their mere aspect, in travelling through 
it, as he did. Each of these men, if President, would have been 




JAMES MONROE. 

[From the painting bv Gilbert Stuart, owned by T. Jefferson Coolidt;e. Esq., Boston 

25 



THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING. 387 

something more than the typical official. Monroe precisely filled 
the chair, and stood for the office, not for himself. 

He left Washington June 2, 181 7, accompanied only by his 
private secretary, Mr. Mason, and by General Joseph G. Swift, 
the Chief Engineer of the War Department. The ostensible 
object of his journey was to inspect the national defences. This 
explained his choice of a companion, and gave him at each point 
an aim beyond the reception of courtesies. With this nominal 
errand he travelled through Maryland to New York City, trav- 
ersed Connecticut and Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hamp- 
shire, and Maine, then a district only. He went southward 
through Vermont, visited the fortifications at Plattsburg, trav- 
elled through the forests to the St. Lawrence, inspected Sack- 
ett's Harbor and Fort Niagara; went to Buffalo, and sailed 
through Lake Erie to Detroit. Thence he turned eastward 
again, returning through Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. 
He reached home September 17th, after an absence of more 
than three months. 

During all this trip there occurred not one circumstance to 
mar the reception of the President, though there were plenty of 
hardships to test his endurance. Everywhere he was greeted 
with triumphal arches, groups of school-children, cavalcades of 
mounted citizens, and the roar of cannon. The Governor of 
Massachusetts, by order of the Legislature, provided him with 
a military escort from border to border; no other State appar- 
ently did this, though the Governor of New Hampshire apolo- 
gized for not having official authority to follow the example. 
Everywhere there were addresses of welcome by eminent citi- 
zens. Everywhere the President made answer. Clad in the 
undress uniform of a Revolutionarv officer — blue coat, lis^ht un- 
derclothes, and cocked hat — he stood before the people a 
portly and imposing figure, well representing the men who 
won American freedom in arms. His replies, many of which 
are duly reported, seem now laudably commonplace and reason- 



388 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

ably brief ; but they were held at the time to be " elegant and 
impressive." 

We see a lingering trace of the more ceremonial period of 
Washington and Adams when the semi - official historian of 
Monroe's travels reports that in approaching Dartmouth, New 
Hampshire, " although the road was shrouded in clouds of dust, 
he condescended to leave his carriage and make his entry on 
horseback." The more eminent Federalist leaders, except Mr. 
H. G. Otis, took apparently no conspicuous part in the recep- 
tion ; but their place was supplied by others. Elder Goodrich 
of the Enfield (New Hampshire) Shakers, addressed him with 
" I, James Goodrich, welcome James Monroe to our habitations ;" 
and the young ladies of the Windsor (Vermont) Female Acad- 
emy closed their address by saying, " That success may crown 
all your exertions for the public good is the ardent wish of 
many a patriotic though youthful female bosom.'' Later, when 
traversing " the majestic forests " near Ogdensburg, New York, 
" his attention was suddenly attracted by an elegant collation, 
fitted up in a superior style by the ofificers of the army and the 
citizens of the country. He partook of it with a heart beating 
in unison with those of his patriotic countrymen by whom he 
was surrounded, and acknowledged this unexpected and roman- 
tic civility with an unaffected and dignified complaisance." 

Philadelphia had at this time a population of 112,000 in- 
habitants; New York, of 1 15,000; Baltimore, of 55,000; Boston, 
of 40,000; Providence, of 10,000; Hartford, of 8000; Pittsburg, 
of 7000; Cincinnati, of 7000; St. Louis, of 3500; Chicago was 
but a fort. The Ohio River was described by those who nar- 
rated this journey as an obscure and remote stream that had 
" for nearly six thousand years rolled in silent majesty through 
the towering forests of the New World." " It would not be," 
says a writer of that period, " the madness of a deranged imagi- 
nation to conclude that this stream in process of time will be- 
come as much celebrated as the Ganges of Asia, the Nile of 



THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING. 389 

Africa, and the Danube of Europe. In giving this future im- 
portance to the Ohio, the Mississippi and the Missouri cannot 
be forgotten as exceeding it in length and in importance. These 
astonishing streams may hereafter, as civih'zation progresses in 
the present wilds of the American republic, become rivals to 
the Ohio." When we consider that the region thus vaguely 
indicated is now the centre of population for the nation, we 
learn what a little world it was, after all, which was embraced 
in the Presidential tour of James Monroe. Even of that small 
realm, however, he did not see the whole during these travels. 
We know from a letter of Crawford to Gallatin, quoted by Mr. 
Oilman, that a good deal of jealousy was felt in the Southern 
States at Monroe's " apparent acquiescence in the seeming man- 
worship " at the North ; and Crawford thinks that while the 
President had gained in health by the trip, he had "lost as 
much as he had gained in popularity." The gain was, however, 
made where he most needed it, and another tour to Augusta, 
Nashville, and Louisville soon restored the balance. 

The President beinor established at the seat of orovernment, 
the fruits of his enlarged popularity were seen in the tranquillity 
and order of his administration. The most fortunate of offi- 
cials, he was aided by the general longing for peace. He was 
yet more strengthened by the fact that he was at the same time 
governing through a Democratic organization and on Feder- 
alist principles. Nominally he held the legitimate succession 
to Jefferson, having followed, like Madison, through the inter- 
mediate position, that of Secretary of State, which was in those 
days what the position of Prince of Wales was and is in Eng- 
land. But when it came to political opinions, we can now see 
that all which Federalism had urged — a strong government, a 
navy, a national bank, a protective tariff, internal improvements, 
a liberal construction of the Constitution — all these had become 
also Democratic doctrines. Were it not for their traditional 
reverence for Jefferson's name, it would sometimes have been 

25* 



390 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

hard to tell Madison and Monroe from Federalists. In a free 
countr}^ when a party disappears, it is usually because the other 
side has absorbed its principles. So it was here, and we never 
can understand the extinction of Federalism unless we bear this 
fact in mind. In the excitement of contest the combatants had 
already changed weapons, and Federalism had been killed, like 
Laertes in " Hamlet," by its own sword. For the time, as Craw- 
ford wrote, all were Federalists, all Republicans. 

Henry Clay, who remains to us as a mere tradition of win- 
ning manners and ready eloquence, was .almost unanimously 
elected and re-elected as Speaker of the House. But Clay was 
a Federalist without knowing it; he wished to strengthen the 
army, to increase the navy, to make the tariff protective, to rec- 
ognize and support the South American republics. General 
Jackson too, the chief military hero of the period, developed the 
national impulse in a way that Jefferson would once have disap- 
proved, by entering the territory of Spanish Florida (in 1818) to 
fight the Seminoles, and by putting to death as " outlaws and 
pirates " two British subjects, Arbuthnot and Ambrister, who 
led the Indians. Then the purchase of Florida for five millions 
was another bold step on the part of the central government, 
following a precedent which had seemed very questionable when 
Jefferson had annexed Louisiana. While buying this the na- 
tion yielded up all claim to what was afterwards Texas ; and all 
these events built up more and more the national feeling — which 
was the bequest of Federalism — as distinct from the separate 
State feeling which was the original Democratic stock in trade. 

It is the crowning proof of the pacified condition to which 
parties were' coming that this peace survived what would have 
been, under other circumstances, a signal of war — the first and 
sudden appearance of the vexed question of slavery. It came 
upon the nation, as Jefferson said, " like a fire-ball in the night." 
It had slumbered since the adoption of the Constitution, and 
came up as an incident of the great emigration westward. For 




HENRY CLAY. 
[From a drawing by Davignon, owned by Louis K. Jlenger, Esq.] 



THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING. 393 

a time, in admitting new States, it was very easy to regard the 
Ohio River as a sort of dividing line, and to alternately admit 
a new Free State above it and a new Slave State below it. In 
this way had successively come in Louisiana (18 12), Indiana 
(18 1 6), Mississippi (181 7), Illinois (18 18), Alabama (18 19). But 
when the process reached Maine and Missouri the struggle 
began. Should slavery extend beyond the Ohio border into the 
great Louisiana purchase .? Again was every aspect of the mo- 
mentous question debated with ardor, Rufus King leading one 
side, John Randolph the other, each side invoking the traditions 
of the fathers, and claiming to secure the safety of the nation. 
"At our evening parties," says John Ouincy Adams in his diary, 
" we hear of nothing but the Missouri question and Mr. King's 
speeches." The contest was ended by Mr. Clay's great effort 
of skill, known in history as the Missouri Compromise. The 
result was to admit both Maine (1820) and Missouri (182 1), with 
a provision thenceforward excluding slavery north of the line of 
36° 30', the southern boundary of Missouri. John Randolph 
called it "a dirty bargain," and christened those Northern men 
who had formed it " dough-faces " — a word which became there- 
after a part of the political slang of the nation. 

Monroe, in a private letter written about this time (Feb. 15, 
1820), declared his belief that "the majority of States, of physi- 
cal force, and eventually of votes in both Houses," would be ulti- 
mately "on the side of the non-slave-holding States." As a mod- 
erate Virginia slave-holder he recognized this as the probable 
condition of affairs. On the other hand, John Quincy Adams, 
strong in antislavery feeling, voted for the compromise, and after- 
wards expressed some misgivings about it. He held it to be 
all that could have been effected under the Constitution, and he 
shrank from risking the safety of the Union. " If the Union 
must be dissolved," he said, "the slavery question is precisely the 
question upon which it ought to break. For tJie present, how- 
ever, this contest is laid to sleep!' And it slept for many years. 



394 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

During two sessions of Congress the Missouri question 
troubled the newly found quiet of the nation, but it did not 
make so much as a ripple on the surface of the President's pop- 
ularity. In 1820 the re-election of Monroe would havt been ab- 
solutely unanimous had not one dissatisfied elector gi-ven his 
vote for John Quincy Adams, the tradition being that this man 
did not wish any other President to rival Washington in una- 
nimity of choice. The Vice - president, Daniel D. Tompkins, 
was re-elected with less complete cordiality, there being fourteen 
votes asrainst him in the Electoral Colles^e. - Then followed the 
second administration of Monroe, to which was given, perhaps 
by the President himself, a name which has secured for the 
whole period a kind of peaceful eminence. It was probably 
fixed and made permanent by two lines in Halleck's once fa- 
mous poem of " Alnwick Castle," evidently written during the 
poet's residence in England in 1822-23. Speaking of the 
change from the feudal to the commercial spirit, he says : 

" 'Tis what 'our President,' Monroe, 

Has called ' the era of good feeling.' 

The Highlander, the bitterest foe 

To modern laws, has felt their blow, 

Consented to be taxed, and vote, 

And put on pantaloons and coat, 
And leave off cattle-stealing." 

It would seem from this verse that Monroe himself was credited 
with the authorship of the phrase; but I have been unable to 
find it in his published speeches or messages, and it is possible 
that it may be of newspaper origin, and that Halleck, writing 
in England, may have fathered it on the President himself. 
This is the more likely because even so mild a flavor of face- 
tiousness as this was foreign to the character of Monroe. 

Under these soothing influences, at any rate, the nation, and 
especially its capital city, made some progress in the amenities 
and refinements of life. It was a period when the social eti- 



THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING. 395 

qiiette of Washington City was going through some changes; 
the population was growing larger, the classes were less distinct, 
the social duties of high officials more onerous. The diary of 
John Quincy Adams records cabinet meetings devoted to such 
momentous questions as who should make the first call, and who 
should be included in the official visiting lists. Mrs, Monroe, 
without a cabinet council, made up her own mind to retrench 
some of those profuse civilities with which her predecessor had 
fatigued herself. Mrs. Madison, a large, portly, kindly dame, 
had retired from office equally regretted by the poor of Wash- 
ington and by its high life ; but she had gained this popularity 
at a severe cost. She had called on all conspicuous strangers ; 
Mrs. Monroe intended to call on nobody. Mrs. Madison had 
been always ready for visitors when at home ; her successor pro- 
posed not to receive them except at her regular levees. The ex- 
P-residentess had presided at her husband's dinner-parties, and 
had invited the wives of all the men who were to be guests ; 
Mrs. Monroe stayed away from the dinner-parties, and so the 
wives were left at home. Add to this that her health was by 
no means strong, and it is plain that there was great ground 
for a spasm of unpopularity. She, however, outlived it, re-es- 
tablished her social relations, gave fortnightly receptions, and 
won much admiration, which she probably deserved. She was 
by birth a Miss Kortwright, of New York, a niece of General 
Knox, and when she accompanied her husband on his embassy 
to Paris she had there been known as " la belle Americaine." 
She was pronounced by observers in later life to be "a most 
regal-looking lady," and her manners were described as " very 
gracious." At her final levee in the White House " her dress 
was superb black velvet ; neck and arms bare, and beautifully 
formed; her hair in puffs, and dressed high on the head, and 
ornamented with white ostrich plumes ; around her neck an ele- 
gant pearl necklace." Her two fair daughters — her only chil- 
dren, Mrs. Hay and Mrs. Gouverneur — assisted at this reception. 



396 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Such was the hostess, but her drawing-rooms, by all contem- 
porary accounts, afforded a curious social medley. The well- 
defined gentry of the Revolutionary period was disappearing, 
and the higher average of dress and manners had not begun to 
show itself — that higher average which has since been rapidly 
developed by the influence of railroads and newspapers, joined 
with much foreio-n travel and a ^reat increase in wealth. It 
was a period when John Randolph was allowed to come to din- 
ner-parties " in a rough, coarse, short hunting coat, with small- 
clothes and boots, and over his boots a pair of coarse coating 
lessines, tied with strincrs around his leo^s," At Presidential re- 
ceptions, in the words of an eye-witness, " ambassadors and con- 
suls, members of Congress and officers of the army and navy, 
greasy boots and silk stockings, Virginia buckskins and Yankee 
cowhides, all mingled in ill-assorted and fantastic groups." 

Houses in Washington had become much larger than for- 
merly, and a similar expansion had been seen in the scale of 
entertainments. It is not uncommon to find records of evening 
parties, at which five or six hundred persons were present, filling 
five or six rooms. When John Quincy Adams, then Secretary 
of State, gave a reception to the newly arrived hero. General 
Andrew Jackson, eight rooms were opened, and there were a 
thousand guests. It was regarded as the finest entertainment 
ever given in Washington, and show^ed, in the opinion of Sen- 
ator Mills, of Massachusetts, " taste, elegance, and good-sense " 
on the part of Mrs. Adams. Elsewhere he pronounces her 
" a very pleasant and agreeable woman," but adds, " the Secre- 
tary has no talent to entertain a mixed company, either by 
conversation or manners." Other agreeable houses were that 
of Mr. Bafrot, the British Minister, whose wife was a niece of 
the Duke of Wellington, and that of M. Hyde de Neuville, the 
French Minister, each house being opened for a weekly recep- 
tion, whereas the receptions at the White House took place but 
once a fortnight. At these entertainments they had music, 



THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING. 397 

cards, and dancing — country-dances, cotillions, with an occasional 
Scotch reel. It was noticed with some surprise that even New 
England ladies would accept the hospitalities of Madame de 




JOHN RANDOLPH. 
[From an early portrait by Stuart, now at Williamsburgli, Va.] 

Neuville on Saturday evenings, and would dance on what they 
had been educated to regard as holy time. 

Among the most conspicuous of these ladies was Mrs. 
Jonathan Russell, of Boston, full of sense and information, but 
charged with some eccentricities of costume; the reigning belle 



398 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

seems to have been the wife of Commodore Hull ; and one of 
the most conspicuous figures was Miss Randolph, of Virginia, 
daughter of the governor of that State, and granddaughter of 
ex-President Jefferson — a damsel who had plenty of brains, and. 
could talk politics with anybody, but was no favorite with the 
ladies. Among the men, John Randolph was the most brilliant 
and interesting, and all the more so from his waywardness and 
insolence. In public life he preceded Calhoun in the opinions 
which have made the latter famous; and in private life he could, 
if he chose, be delightful. " He is now," Mr. Mills writes to his 
wife in 1822, "what he used to be in his best days — in good 
spirits, with fine manners and the most fascinating conversation. 
I would give more to have you see him than any man living on 
the earth." Add to these Messrs. Clay, Webster, Crawford, Van 
Buren, Rufus King, and many other men of marked ability, but 
of varied social aptitude, and we have the Washington of that 
day. By way of background there was the ever-present shadow 
of slavery; and there were occasional visits from Indian dele- 
sations, who save war-dances before the White House in the 
full glory of nakedness and paint. 

In considering this social development we must remember 
that under Monroe's administration American literature may 
be said to have had its birth. Until about his time prose and 
verse were mainly political ; and the most liberal modern collec- 
tion would hardly now borrow a single poem from the little vol- 
ume called the " Columbian Oracle," in which were gathered, 
during the year 1 794, the choicest effusions of Dwight and 
Humphreys, Barlow and Freneau. Fisher Ames, perhaps the 
most accomplished of the Federalists, and the only one who 
took the pains to make "American Literature" the theme of an 
essay, had declared, in 1808, that such a literary product would 
never exist until the course of democracy should be ended, and 
despotism should have taken its place. " Shall we match Joel 
Barlow asiainst Homer or Hesiod T he asked. " Can Thomas 



THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING. 399 

Paine contend with Plato ? . . . Liberty has never lasted long in 
a democracy, nor has it ever ended in anything better than des- 
potism. With the change of our government, our manners and 
sentiments will change. As soon as our emperor has destroyed 
his rivals and established order in his army, he will desire to see 
splendor in his court, and to occupy his subjects with the culti- 
vation of the sciences." 

It was something when the matter of a national literature 
came to be treated, not thus despairingly, but jocosely. This 
progress found a voice, four years later, in Edward Everett, 
who, in his Cambridge poem on "American Poets" (1812), 
prophesied with a little more of hope. He portrayed, indeed, 
with some humor, the difficulties of the native bard, since he 
must deal with the Indian names, of which nobody then dreamed 
that they could ever be thought tuneful : 

"A different scene our native poet shames 
With barbarous titles and with savage names. 
When the warm bard his country's worth would tell, 
Lo Mas-sa-chu-setts' length his lines must swell. 
Would he the gallant tales of war rehearse, 
'Tis graceful Bunker fills the polished verse. 
, Sings he, dear land, those lakes and streams of thine, 

Some mild Memphremagog murmurs in his line, 
Some Ameriscoggin dashes by his way, 
Or smooth Connecticut softens in his lay. 
Would he one verse of easy movement frame, 
The map w.U meet him with a hopeless name; 
Nor can his pencil sketch one perfect act 
But vulgar history mocks him with a fact." 

Still, he thought, something might be done by-and-by, even 
with materials so rough : " 

" Oh yes ! in future days our western lyres, 
Tuned to new themes, shall glow with purer fires, 
Clothed with the charms, to grace their later rhyme, 
Of every former age and foreign clime. 
Then Homer's arms shall ring in Bunker's shock, 
And Virgil's wanderer land on Plymouth rock; 



400 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Then Dante's knights before Quebec shall fall, 
And Charles's trump on trainband chieftains call. 
Our mobs shall wear the wreaths of Tasso's Moors, 
And Barbary's coast shall yield to Baltimore's. 
Here our own bays some native Pope shall grace, 
And lovelier beauties fill Belinda's place." 

It was all greatly applauded, no doubt, as in the best vein of 
the classic Everett ; and it was in Monroe's time, five or ten 
years later, that the fulfilment actually began. He certainly 
could not be called an emperor, nor could his court be termed 
splendid ; yet it was under this plain potentate that a national 
literature was born. 

The English Sydney Smith wrote in 1818, one year after 
Monroe's accession to ofifice : " There does not appear to be in 
America at this time one man of any considerable talents." 
But an acuter and severer literary critic, Lord Jeffrey, wrote, 
four years later (January 27, 1822): "The true hope of the 
world is with you in America — in your example now, and in 
fifty years more, I hope, your influence and actual power." It 
was midway between these two dates that the veteran publish- 
er Mr. S. G. Goodrich, in his " Recollections," placed the birth- 
time of a national literature. " During this period," he says, " we 
beean to have confidence in American oenius, and to dream 
of literary ambition." The Noi'th American Revieiv was estab- 
lished in 1815; Bryant's " Thanatopsis " appeared in 1817; Ir- 
ving's " Sketch-Book " in 1818 ; Cooper's " Spy " in 1822. When 
Monroe went out of ofiice, in 1825, Emerson was teaching- 
school, Whittier was at work on his father's farm, Hawthorne 
and Longfellow were about to graduate from college ; but 
American literature was born. 

People still maintained — as a few yet hold — that these vari- 
ous authors succeeded in spite of the national atmosphere, not 
by means of it. It seems to me easy to show, on the contrary, 
that they all impressed themselves on the world chiefly by using 
the materials they found at home. Longfellow, at first steeped 



THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING. 



401 




KUFUS KINO. 
[From tlie painting by Gilbert Stuart, owned by A. Gracie King. Fsq.] 



TTA.U Sc. 



in European influences, gained in strength from the time he 
touched his native soil ; nor did he find any difficulty in weav- 
ing into melodious verse those Indian names which had ap- 
palled Mr. Everett. Irving, the most exotic of jjl these writers, 

26 



402' HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

really made his reputation by his use of what has been called 
"the Knickerbocker legend." He did not create the traditions 
of the Hudson; they created him. Mrs. Josiah Quincy, sailing 
up that river in 1786, when Irving was a child three years old, 
records that the captain of the sloop had a legend, either super- 
natural or traditional, for every scene, "and not a mountain 
reared its head unconnected with some marvellous story." The 
legends were all there ready for Irving, just as the New Eng- 
land lecjends were waitinij for Whittier. Once let the man of 
genius be born, and his own soil was quit-e able to furnish the 
food that should rear hira. 

Apart from this sodal and literary progress, two especial 
points marked the adnynistration of Monroe, both being mat- 
ters whose importance'* turned out to be far greater than any 
one had suspected. The first was the introduction of a definite 
term of office for miinor civil officers. When the First Congress 
asserted the right of the President to remove such officials at 
all, it was thouglit a dangerous power. In practice that power 
had been but little used, and scarcely ever for political pur- 
poses, when William H. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury, 
was touched with Presidential ambition. Most of the minor 
officials being then in his department, he conceived the plan of 
pushing through a bill to make them removable every four 
years. It seemed harmless. The apparent object was to get 
rid of untrustworthy revenue officers. It w^as enacted with so 
little discussion that Benton's " Abridgment of Debates " does 
not mention its passage. It was signed by the President " un- 
warily," as John Quincy Adams tells us, on May 15, 1820; and 
instantly, as the same authority asserts; all the Treasury officials 
became " ardent Crawfordites." Jefferson and Madison utterly 
disapproved of the new system ; so did Adams, so did Calhoun, 
so did Webster; but it has remained unchanged until this day, 
for good or for evil. 

It so happens that this law has never until lately been iden- 



THt: ERA OF GOOD FEELING. 403 

tified with the period of Monroe ; it was enacted so quietly that 
its birthday was forgotten. Not so with another measure, which 
was not indeed a law, but merely the laying down of a principle, 
ever since known as the " Monroe doctrine ;" this being simply 
a demand of non-interference bv foreion nations with the affairs 
of the two American continents. There has been a o-ood deal of 
dispute as to the real authorship of this announcement, Charles 
Francis Adams claiming it for his father, and Charles Sumner 
for the English statesman Canning. Mr. Oilman, however, in 
his late memoir of President Monroe, has shown with exhaustive 
research that this doctrine had grown up gradually into a na- 
tional tradition before Monroe's time, and that he merely for- 
mulated it, and made it a matter of distinct record. The whole 
statement is contained in a few detached passages of his mes- 
sage of December 2, 1823. In this he announces that "the 
American continents, by the free and independent condition 
which they have assumed and maintain, are not to be consid- 
ered as subjects for colonization by European powers." Further 
on he points out that the people of the United States have kept 
aloof from European dissensions, and ask only in return that 
North and South America should be equally let alone. " We 
should consider any attempt on their part to extend their sys- 
tem to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our 
peace and safety;" and while no objection is made to any ex- 
isting colony or dependency of theirs, yet any further intrusion 
or interference would be regarded as " the manifestation of an 
unfriendly spirit towards the United States." This, in brief, is 
the " Monroe doctrine " as originally stated ; and it will always 
remain a singular fact that this President — the least original or 
commanding of those who early held that office — should yet be 
the only one whose name is identified with what amounts to a 
wholly new axiom of international law. 

Apart from this, Mr. Monroe's messages, which fill as many 
pages as those of any two of his predecessors, are conspicuously 



404 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

hard reading; and the only portions to which a student of the 
present day can turn with any fresh interest are those which 
measure the steady progress of the nation. " Twenty-five years 
ago," he could justly say — looking back upon his own first dip- 
lomatic achievement — " the river Mississippi was shut up, and 
our Western brethren had no outlet for their commerce. What 
has been the progress since that time } The river has not only 
become the property of the United States from its source to the 
ocean, with all its tributary streams (with the exception of the 
upper part of the Red River only), but Louisiana, with a fair 
and liberal boundary, on the western side, and the Floridas on 
the eastern, have been ceded to us. The United States now 
enjoy the complete and uninterrupted sovereignty over the 
whole territory from St. Croix to the Sabine." This was writ- 
ten March 4, 182 1. Nevertheless, the President could not, even 
then, give his sanction to any national efforts for the improve- 
ment of this vast domain ; and he vetoed, during the following 
year, the "Cumberland Road" bill, which would have led the 
way, he thought, to a wholly unconstitutional system of internal 
improvements. With this exception his administration came 
into no very marked antagonism to public sentiment, and even 
in dealing with this he went to no extremes, but expressed will- 
ingness that the national road should be repaired, not extended. 
And while he looked upon the past progress of the nation 
with wonder, its destiny was to him a sealed book. Turning 
from all this record of past surprises, he could find no better 
plan for the future development of the post-ofiice department, 
for instance, than to suggest that all the mails of the nation 
might profitably be carried thenceforward on horseback. As a 
crowning instance of how little a tolerably enlightened man 
may see into the future, it would be a pity not to cjuote the 
passage from this veto message of May 4, 1822: 

"Unconnected with passengers and other objects, it cannot be doubted that 
the mail itself may be carried in every part of our Union, with nearly as much 



THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING. 405 

economy and greater despatch, on horseback, than in a stage; and in many 
parts with much greater. In every part of the Union in which stages can be 
preferred the roads are sufficiently good, provided those which serve for every 
other purpose will accommodate them. In every other part, where horses alone 
are used, if other people pass them on horseback^ surely the mail-carrier can. 
For an object so simple and so easy in the execution it would doubtless excite 
surprise if it should be thought proper to appoint commissioners to lay off the 
country on a great scheme of improvement, with the power to shorten distances, 
reduce- heights, level mountains, and pave surfaces." 



Those who have traversed on horseback, even within twenty 
years, those miry Virginia roads and those treacherous fords 
with which President Monroe was so famihar, will best appre- 
ciate this project for the post-office accommodations of a con- 
tinent — a plan " so simple and easy in the execution." Since 
then the country has indeed been laid off "in a great scheme 
of improvement," distances have been shortened, heights re- 
duced, and surfaces paved, even as he suggested, but under cir- 
cumstances which no President in 1822 could possibly have 
conjectured. Indeed, it was not till the following administra- 
tion, that of John Quincy Adams, that the first large impulse of 
expansion was really given, and the great western march began. 

26* 



XVII. 

THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH. 

THE four years' administration of John Ouincy Adams is 
commonly spoken of as a very uninteresting period, but it 
was in one respect more important than the twenty years that 
went before it or the ten years that followed. For the first time 
the inhabitants of the United States began to learn in how very 
large a country they lived. From occupying a mere strip of 
land on the Atlantic they had spread already through New 
York and Ohio ; but it was by detached emigrations, of which 
the nation was hardly conscious, by great single waves of popu- 
lation sweeping here and there. After 1825 this development 
became a self-conscious and deliberate thing, recognized and 
legislated for, though never systematically organized by the 
nation. When, between 1820 and 1830, Michigan Territory in- 
creased 260 per cent., Illinois 180 per cent., Arkansas Territory 
142 per cent., and Indiana 133 per cent., it indicated not a mere 
impulse but a steady progress, not a wave but a tide. Now that 
we are accustomed to the vast statistics of to-day, it may not 
seem exciting to know that the population of the whole nation 
rose from nearly ten millions (9,633,822) in 1820 to nearly thir- 
teen (12,866,020) in 1830; but this gain of one-third was at the 
time the most astounding demonstration of national progress. 
It enables us to understand the immense importance attached in 
John Quincy Adams's time to a phrase now commonplace and 
almost meaningless — "internal improvements." It is true that 



THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH. 407 

during his term of office more commercial treaties were nego- 
tiated than under all his predecessors; but this, after all, was 
a minor benefit. The foreign commerce of the United States 
is now itself, comparatively speaking, subordinate ; it is our vast 
internal development that makes us a nation. It is as the great 
epoch of internal improvements that the four years from 1825 
to 1829 will forever be momentous in the history of the United 
States. 

In 1825 the nation was in the position of a young man who 
has become aware that he owns a vast estate, but finds it to be 
mostly unproductive, and hardly even marketable. Such a per- 
son sometimes hits upon an energetic agent, who convinces him 
that the essential thing is to build a few roads, bridge a few 
streams, and lay out some building lots. It was just in this 
capacity of courageous adviser that John Ouincy Adams was 
quite ready to offer himself. On the day of his inauguration 
the greater part of Ohio was yet covered with forests, and Illi- 
nois was a wilderness. The vast size of the country was still 
a source rather of anxiety than of pride. Monroe had expressed 
the fear that no republican government could safely control a 
nation reaching so far as the Mississippi ; and Livingston, after 
negotiating for the purchase of Louisiana, had comforted him- 
self with the thought that a large part of it might probably be 
resold. At that time this enormous annexation was thought to 
endanger the very existence of the original thirteen States. 

This was perhaps nowhere more frankly stated than by an 
able Fourth -of -July orator at Salem, Massachusetts, in 18 13, 
Benjamin R. Nichols. He declares, in this address, that to ad- 
mit to the Union new States formed out of new territory is "to 
set up a principle which, if submitted to, will make us more 
dependent than we were as colonies of Great Britain. If a ma- 
jority of Congress have a right of making new States where 
they please, we shall probably soon hear of States formed for 
us in East and West Florida; and, should it come within the 



408 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

scope of the policy of our rulers, of others as far as the Pacific 
Ocean. If all this be right, the consequence is that the people 
of New England, in case of any disturbances in these newly 
created States, may, under pretence of suppressing insurrections, 
be forced to march, in obedience to the Constitution, to the re- 
motest corners of the globe." In other words, that which now 
makes the crowning pride of an American citizen, that the 
States of the Union are spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 
was then held up by a patriotic Federalist as the very extreme 
of danger. The antidote to this deadly peril, the means of es- 
tabhshino: some communication with these " remotest corners of 
the globe," had necessarily to be found, first of all, in internal 
improvements. At least, under these circumstances of alarm, a 
highway or two might be held a reasonable proposition ; and the 
new President, in his inaugural address, approached the subject 
with somethins: of the linoreringr stateliness of those davs : 

" The magnificence and splendor of then- public works are among the im- 
pevishable glories of the ancient republics. The roads and aqueducts of Rome 
have been the admiration of all after -ages, and have survived thousands of 
years, after all her conquests have been swallowed up in despotism, or become 
the spoil of barbarians. Some diversity of opinion has prevailed with regard 
to the powers of Congress for legislation upon subjects of this nature. The 
most respectful deference is due to doubts originating in pure patriotism, and 
sustained by venerated authority. But nearly twenty years have passed since 
the construction of the first national road was commenced. The authority for 
its construction was then unquestioned. To how many thousands of our coun- 
trymen has it proved a benefit ? To what single individual has it ever proved 
an injury?" 

It has already been pointed out that when John Ouincy 
Adams became President the nation had been governed for 
a quarter of a century by Democratic administrations, acting 
more and more on Federalist principles. The tradition of 
States-rights had steadily receded, and the reality of a strong 
and expanding nation had taken its place. The very men who 
had at first put into the most definite shape these States- 
rights opinions had, by their action, done most to overthrow 




JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 
[From the painting by G. P. A. Healy, in tlie Corcoran Gallery, Wasliinjton.j 



THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH. 41 I 

them, Jefferson above all. By the purchase of Louisiana he 
had, perhaps unconsciously, done more than any President be- 
fore him to make national feeling permanent. Having, by a 
happy impulse, and in spite of all his own theories, enormously 
enlarged the joint territory, he had recognized the need of open- 
ing and developing the new possession ; he had set the example 
of proposing national appropriations for roads, canals, and even 
education; and had given his sanction (March 24, 1806) to 
building a national road from Maryland to Ohio, first obtaining 
the consent of the States through which it was to pass. To 
continue this policy would, he admitted, require constitutional 
amendments, but in his closing message he favored such alter- 
ations. It was but a step from favoring constitutional amend- 
ments for this purpose to doing without them ; Jefferson, Madi- 
son, Monroe had done the one, John Ouincy Adams did the 
other. 

Of course it took the nation by surprise. Nothing aston- 
ishes people more than to be taken at their word, and have their 
own theories energetically put in practice. Others had talked 
in a general way about internal improvements; under President 
Monroe there had even been created (April 30, 1824) a national 
board to plan them ; but John Quincy Adams really meant to 
have them ; and his very first message looked formidable to 
those who supposed that because he had broken with the Fed- 
eralists he was therefore about to behave like an old-fashioned 
Democrat. In truth he was more new-fashioned than anybody. 
This is the way he committed himself in this first message : 

" While foreign nations, less blessed with that freedom which is power than 
ourselves, are advancing with gigantic strides in the career of public improve- 
ment, were we to slumber in indolence, or fold up our arms and proclaim to 
the world that we are palsied by the will of our constituents, would it not be to 
cast away the bounties of Providence, and doom ourselves to perpetual in- 
feriority ? In the course of the year now drawing to its close, we have beheld, 
under the auspices and at the expense of one State of this Union, a new uni- 
versity unfolding its portals to the sons of science, and holding up the torch of 



412 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

human improvement to eyes that seek the light. We have seen, under the per- 
severing and enlightened enterprise of another State, the waters of our western 
lakes mingle with those of the ocean. If undertakings like these have been 
accomplished in the compass of a few years by the authority of single members 
of our confederation, can we, the representative authorities of the whole Union, 
fall behind our fellow-servants in the exercise of the trust committed to us for 
the benefit of our common sovereign, by the accomplishment of works impor- 
tant to the whole, and to which neither the authority nor the resources of any 
one State can be adequate ?" 

Nor was this all. It is curious to see that the President's 
faithful ally, Mr, Rush, Secretary of the Treasury, went far be- 
yond his chief in the tone of his recommendations, and drifted 
into what would now be promptly labeHed as Communism. 
When we read as an extreme proposition in these days, in the 
middle of some mildly socialistic manifesto, the suggestion that 
there should be a national bureau " whereby new fields can be 
opened, old ones developed, and every labor can be properly 
directed and located," we fancy it a novelty. But see how utter- 
ly Mr. Rush surpassed these moderate proposals in one of his 
reports as Secretary of the Treasury. He said that it was the 
duty of government 

" to augment the number and variety of occupations for its inhabitants ; to hold 
out to every degree of labor and to every manifestation of skill its appropriate 
object and inducement ; to organize the whole labor of a country ; to entice 
into the widest ranges its mechanical and intellectual capacities, instead of suf- 
fering them to slumber ; to call forth, wherever hidden, latent ingenuity, giving 
to effort activity, and to emulation ardor ; to create employment for the greatest 
amount of numbers by adapting it to the diversified faculties, propensities, and 
situations of men, so that every particle of ability, every shade of genius, may 
come into requisition." 

Let US now turn to the actual advances made under the 
guidance of Mr. Adams. Nothing in the history of the globe 
is so extraordinary in its topographical and moral results as the 
vast western march of the American people within a hundred 
years. Let us look, for instance, at some contemporary map 
of what constituted the northern part of the United States in 
1798. The western boundary of visible settlement is the Gene- 



THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH. 413 

see River of New York. The names on the Hudson are Hke 
the names of to-day; all beyond is strange. No railroad, no 
canal ; only a turnpike running to the Genesee, and with no 
farther track to mark the way through the forest to " Buffaloe," 
on the far-off lake. Along this turnpike are settlements, '• Sche- 
nectady," " Canajohary," " Schuyler or Utica," " Fort Stenwick 
or Rome," " Oneida Cassle," " Onondaga Cassle," " Geneva," and 
" Canandargue," where the road turns north to Lake Ontario. 
Forests cover all Western New York, all North-western Penn- 
sylvania. Far off in Ohio is a detached region indicated as 
" the Connecticut Reserve, conceded to the families who had 
been ruined during the war of Independence" — whence our 
modern phrase "Western Reserve." The summary of the whole 
map is that the nation still consists of the region east of the 
Alleghanies, with a few outlying settlements, and nothing more. 
Now pass over twenty years. In the map prefixed to Will- 
iam Darby's "Tour from New York to Detroit," in 1818 — this 
Darby being the author of an emigrant's guide, and a member 
of the New York Historical Society — we find no State west of 
the Mississippi except Missouri, and scarcely any towns in In- 
diana or Illinois. Michigan Territory is designated, but across 
the whole western half of it is the inscription, " This part very 
imperfectly known." All beyond Lake Michigan and all west 
of the Mississippi is a nameless waste, except for a few names 
of rivers and of Indian villages. This marks the progress — and 
a very considerable progress — of twenty years. Writing from 
Buffalo (now spelled correctly), Darby says : " The beautiful and 
highly cultivated lands of the strait of Erie are now a specimen 
of what in forty years will be the landscape from Erie to Chi- 
caga \sic\. It is a very gratifying anticipation to behold in 
fancy the epoch to come when this augmenting mass of the 
population will enjoy, in the interior of this vast continent, a 
choice collection of immense marts where the produce of the 
banks -of innumerable rivers and lakes can be exchanged." 



414 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Already, it seems, travellers and map-makers had got from 
misspelling "Biiffaloe"' to misspelling " Chicaga," It was a 
great deal. The Edinburgh Reviezv for that same year (June, 
1818), in reviewing Birkbecks once celebrated "Travels in 
America," said : 

"Where is this prodigious increase of numbers, this vast extension of do- 
minion, to end ? ^Vhat bounds has nature set to the progress of this mighty 
nation? Let our jealousy burn as it may, let our intolerance of America be as 
unreasonably violent as we please, still it is plain that she is a power in spite 
of us, rapidly rising to supremacy ; or, at least, that each year so mightily aug- 
ments her strength as to overtake, by a most sensible distance, even the most 
formidable of her competitors." 

This was written, it must be remembered, when the whole 
population of the United States was but little more than nine 
millions, or about the number now occupying New York and 
Pennsylvania. 

What were the first channels for this great transfer of pop- 
ulation .'^ They were the great turnpike -road up the Mohawk 
Valley, in New York ; and farther south, the " National Road," 
which ended at Wheeling, Virginia. Old men, now or recently 
living — as, for instance, Mr. Sewall Newhouse, the trapper and 
trap-maker of Oneida — can recall the long lines of broad-wheeled 
wagons, drawn by ten horses, forty of these teams sometimes 
coming in close succession ; the stages, six of which were some- 
times in sight at once; the casualties, the break -downs, the 
sloughs of despond, the passengers at work with fence-rails to 
pry out the vehicle from a mud-hole. These sights, now dis- 
appearing on the shores of the Pacific, were then familiar in the 
heart of what is now the East. This was the tide flowing west- 
ward ; while eastward, on the other hand, there soon began a 
counter- current of fiocks and herds sent from the new settle- 
ments to supply the older States. As early as 1824 Timothy 
Flint records meetinor a drove of more than a thousand cattle 
and swine, rough and shaggy as wolves, guided towards the 



THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH. 415 

Philadelphia market by a herdsman looking as untamed as 
themselves, and coming from Ohio — " a name which still sound- 
ed in our ears," Flint says, "like the land of savages." 

The group so well known in our literature, the emigrant 
family, the way-side fire, the high-peaked wagon, the exhausted 
oxen — this picture recedes steadily in space as we come nearer 
to our own time. In 1788 it set off with the first settlers from 
Massachusetts to seek Ohio; in 1798 it was just leaving the 
Hudson to ascend the Mohawk River; in 18 15 the hero of 
" Lawrie Todd" saw it at Rochester, New York; in 18 19 Dar- 
by met it near Detroit, Michigan; in 1824 Flint saw it in Mis- 
souri; in 1831 Alexander depicted it in Tennessee; in 1843 
Margaret Fuller Ossoli sketched it beyond Chicago, Illinois; in 
1856 I myself saw it in Nebraska and Kansas; in 1864 Clarence 
King described it in his admirable sketch, " Way-side Pikes," in 
California; in 18S2 Mrs. Leighton, in her graphic letters, pict- 
ures it at Puget Sound ; beyond which, as it has reached the 
Pacific, it cannot advance. From this continent the emigrant 
group in its original form has almost vanished ; the process of 
spreading emigration by steam is less picturesque but more 
rapid. 

The newly published volumes of the United States Census 
for 1880 give, with an accuracy and fulness of detail such as 
were before unexampled, the panorama of this vast westward 
march. It is a matter of national pride to see how its ever- 
changing phases have been caught and photographed in these 
masterly volumes, in a way such as the countries of the older 
world have never equalled, though it would seem so much easier 
to depict their more fixed conditions. The Austrian newspapers 
complain that no one in that nation knows at this moment, for 
instance, the centre of Austrian population ; while the successive 
centres for the United States are here exhibited on a chart with 
a precision as great, and an impressiveness to the imagination 
as vast, as when astronomers represent for us the successive 



4l6 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

positions of a planet. Like the shadow thrown by the hand of 
some great clock, this inevitable point advances year by year 
across the continent, sometimes four miles a year, sometimes 
eight miles, but always advancing. And with this striking sum- 
mary the census report gives us a series of successive represen- 
tations on colored charts, at ten-year intervals, of the gradual 
expansion and filling in of population over the whole territory 
of the United States. No romance is so fascinating as the 
thoughts suggested by these silent sheets, each line and tint 
representing the unspoken sacrifices and fatigues of thousands 
of nameless men and women. Let us consider for a moment 
these successive indications. 

In the map for 1790 the whole population is on the eastern 
slope of the Appalachian range, except a slight spur of emigra- 




iO- E N T U C K Y 



MAP SHOWING THE MOVEMENT OF THE CENTRE OF POPULATION WESTWARD ON 
THE THIRTY-NINTH PARALLEL. 

tion reaching westward from Pennsylvania and Virginia, and a 
detached settlement in Kentucky. The average depth of the 
strip of civilization, measuring back from the Atlantic westward, 
is but three hundred and fifty-five miles. In 1800 there is some 
increase of population within the old lines, and a western move- 
ment along the Mohawk in New York State, while the Kentucky 
group of inhabitants has spread down into Tennessee. In 18 10 
all New York, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky are well sprinkled 
with population, which begins to invade southern Ohio also, 
while the territory of Orleans has a share ; although Michigan, 
Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, the Mississippi territory — including 
Mississippi and Alabama — are still almost or quite untouched. 



THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH. 417 

In 1820 Ohio, or two-thirds of it, shows signs of civihzed occu- 
pation ; and the settlements around Detroit, w^hich so impressed 
Darby, have joined those in Ohio ; Tennessee is well occupied, 
as is southern Indiana ; while Illinois, Wisconsin, Alabama, have 
little rills of population adjoining the Indian tribes, which are 
not yet removed, and still retard Southern settlements. In 1830 
— Adams's administration being now closed — Indiana is nearly 
covered with population, Illinois more than half; there is hardly 
any unsettled land in Ohio, while Michigan is beginning to be 
occupied. Population has spread up the Missouri to the north 
of Kansas River ; and farther south, Louisiana, Alabama, and 
Arkansas begin to show for something. But even in 1830 the 
centre of population is in Moorefield, Virginia, and is not yet 
moving westward at the rate of more than five miles a year. 

This year of 1830 lying beyond the term of John Quincy 
Adams's administration, I shall here follow the statistics of the 
great migration no farther. Turn now to his annual message, 
and see how, instead of the doubts or cautious hints of his pre- 
decessors, these State papers are filled with suggestions of those 
special improvements which an overflowing Treasury enabled 
him to secure. In his third annual message, for instance, he 
alludes to reports ready for Congress, and in some cases acted 
upon, in respect to the continuance of the national road from 
Cumberland eastward, and to Columbus and St. Louis westward; 
other reports as to a national road from Washington to Buffalo, 
and a post-road from Baltimore to Philadelphia; as to a canal 
from Lake Pontchartrain to the Mississippi ; as to another to be 
cut across Florida; another to connect Mobile and Pensacola; 
another to unite the Coosa and Hiwassee rivers in Alabama. 
There are reports also on Cape Fear ; on the Swash in Pamlico 
Sound ; on La Plaisance Bay in Michigan ; on the Kennebec 
and Saugatuck rivers ; on the harbors of Edgartown, Hyannis, 
and • Newburyport. What has been already done, he says, in 
these and similar directions, has cost three or four millions of 

27 



41 8 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

dollars annually, but it has been done without creating a dollar 
of taxes or debt ; nor has it diminished the payment of previous 
debts, which have indeed been reduced to the extent of sixteen 
millions of dollars in three years. But this was only a partial 
estimate. During the whole administration of John Quincy 
Adams, according to the American Animal Register, more than 
a million of dollars were devoted to the light-house system ; half 
a million to public buildings ; two millions to arsenals and ar- 
mories ; three millions to coast fortifications ; three millions to 
the navy; and four millions to internal improvements and scien- 
tific surveys. Including smaller items, nearly fourteen millions 
were expended under him for permanent objects, besides five 
millions of dollars for pensions; a million and a half for the 
Indian tribes; thirty millions for the reduction of the public 
debt ; and a surplus of five millions for his successor. Here 
was patriotic house -keeping indeed for the vast family of the 
nation, and yet this administration has very commonly been 
passed over as belonging to those times of peace that have 
proverbially but few historians. 

Let us return to the actual progress of the great western 
march. The Ohio River being once reached, the main channel 
of emigration lay in the watercourses. Steamboats as yet were 
but beginning their invasion, amid the general dismdy and curs- 
ing of the population of boatmen that had rapidly established 
itself along the shore of every river. The early water life of 
the Ohio and its kindred streams was the very romance of emi- 
gration ; no monotonous agriculture, no toilsome wood -chop- 
ping, could keep back the adventurous boys who found delight 
in the endless novelty, the alternate energy and repose of a 
floating existence on those delightful waters. The variety of 
river craft corresponded to the varied tastes and habits of the 
boatmen. There was the great barge with lofty deck, requiring 
twenty-five men to work it up-stream ; there was the long keel- 
boat, carrying from fifteen to thirty tons ; there was the Ken- 



THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH. 419 

tucky " broad-horn," compared by the emigrants of that day 
to a New England pigsty set afloat, and sometimes built one 
hundred feet long, and carrying seventy tons; there was the 
"family boat," of like structure, and bearing a whole household, 
with cattle, hogs, horses, and sheep. Other boats were floating 
tin shops, blacksmiths' shops, whiskey shops, dry-goods shops. 
A few were propelled by horse-power. Of smaller vessels there 
were "covered sleds," "ferry flats," and "Alleghany skiffs;" "pi- 
rogues " made from two tree trunks, or " dug-outs " consisting 
of one. These boats would set out from Pittsburg for voy- 
ages of all lengths, sometimes extending over three thousand 
miles, and reaching points on the Missouri, Arkansas, and Red 
rivers. Boats came to St. Louis from Montreal with but few 
" portages " or " carries " on the way ; and sometimes arrived 
from Mackinaw, when the streams were high and the morasses 
full, without being carried by hand at all. 

The crews were carefully chosen ; a " Kentuck," or Ken- 
tuckian, was considered the best man at a pole, and a " Ka- 
nuck," or French Canadian, at the oar or the " cordelle," the 
rope used to haul a boat up-sti"eam. Their talk was of the dan- 
gers of the river ; of " planters and sawyers," meaning tree 
trunks embedded more or less firmly in the river ; of " rififles," 
meaning ripples ; and of "shoots," or rapids (French, chtites). It 
was as necessary to have violins on board as to have whiskey, 
and all the traditions in song or picture of " the jolly boatmen " 
date back to that by-gone day. Between the two sides of the 
river there was already a jealousy. Ohio was called " the Yan- 
kee State ;" and Flint tells us that it was a standing joke among 
the Ohio boatmen, when asked their cargo, to reply, " Pit-coal 
indigo, wooden nutmegs, straw baskets, and Yankee notions." 
The same authority describes this sort of questioning as being 
inexhaustible among the river people, and asserts that from one 
descending boat came this series of answers, all of which proved 
to be truthful : " Where are you from .?" " Redstone." " What's 



\ 



420 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

your landing ?" " Millstones." " What's your captain's name ?" 
" Whetstone." " Where are you bound T' " To Limestone." 

All this panorama of moving life was brought nearly to a 
close, during the younger Adams's administration, by the intro- 
duction of steamboats, though it was prolonged for a time upon 
the newly built canals. Steamboats were looked upon, as Flint 
tells us, with " detestation " by the inhabitants, though they soon 
learned to depend upon them, and to make social visits in them 
to friends a hundred miles away. In 18 12 Fulton's first West- 
ern boat, the Orleans, went down the Ohio, and in 18 16 the 
WasJiington proved itself able to stem the current in returning. 
But for a time canals spread more rapidly than steamboats. 
Gouverneur Morris had first suggested the Erie Canal in 
1777, and Washington had indeed proposed a system of such 
water-ways in 1774. But the first actual work of this kind in 
the United States w^as that dug around Turner's Falls, in Mas- 
sachusetts, soon after 1792. In 1803 De Witt Clinton again 
proposed the Erie Canal. It was begun in 181 7, and opened 
July 4, 1825, being cut mainly through a wilderness. The ef- 
fect produced on public opinion was absolutely startling. When 
men found that the time from Albany to Buffalo was reduced 
one-half, and that the freight on a ton of merchandise was cut 
down from $100 to $10, and ultimately to $3, similar enterprises 
sprang into being everywhere. — The most conspicuous of these 
was the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, from Georgetown to Pitts- 
burg, which was surveyed and planned by the national board 
of internal improvements, created just before Mr. Adams's acces- 
sion. On July 4, 1828, the first blow in the excavation was struck 
by the President. He had a habit of declining invitations to 
agricultural fairs and all public exhibitions, but was persuaded 
to make a speech and put the first spade in the ground for this 
great enterprise. The soil was for some reason so hard that 
it would scarcely give way, so the President took off his coat, 
and tried again and again, at last raising the sod, amid general 



THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH. . 421 

applause. It was almost the only time during his arduous life 
when he paused to do a picturesque or symbolic act before the 
people. 

Thus, by various means, the great wave swept westward. 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey filled up Ohio; 
North Carolina and Virginia populated Kentucky and Tennes- 
see ; Canada sent its emigrants into Illinois and Indiana, and all 
down the Mississippi. The new settlers, being once launched 
in the free career of the West, developed by degrees a new type 
of character. Everyw^here there was a love of the frontier life, 
of distance, isolation, of " range," as the Kentuckians of that 
day called it. There was a charming side to it all. There was 
no more fascinating existence anywhere than that of the pioneer 
hunters in the yet unfelled forests, and the lasting popularity of 
Cooper's novels proves the permanent spell exercised by this 
life over the imagination. No time will ever diminish the pict- 
uresqueness of Daniel Boone's career in Kentucky, for instance, 
amid the exquisite beauty of the regions near Lexington, w^oods 
carpeted with turf like an English park, free from underbrush, 
with stately trees of every variety, and fresh, clear streams every- 
where ; or beside the salt springs of the Licking Valley, where 
Simon Kenton saw from twenty to thirty thousand buffaloes 
congregated at a time. What were the tame adventures of 
Robin Hood to the occasion when these two pioneer hunters, 
Boone and Kenton, approached the Licking Valley, each alone, 
from opposite points, each pausing to reconnoitre before leaving 
the shelter of the woods, and each recognizing the presence of 
another human being in the valley } Then began a long series 
of manoeuvres on the part of each to discover who the other 
was, without self-betrayal ; and such was their skill that it took 
forty-eight hours before either could make up his mind that the 
other was a w^hite man and a friend, not an Indian and a foe. 

But there was to all this picture a reverse side that was less 
charming. For those who were not content to spend their lives 



422 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

as woodsmen in Kentucky, and preferred to seek Ohio as agri- 
culturists, how much of sacrifice there was ! what weary years 
of cold, poverty, discomfort ! This letter, quoted in Perkins's 
"Fifty Years of Ohio," as written in 1818 from Marietta, gives 
a glimpse through the door-way of a thousand cabins : 

" Marietta I find a poor, muddy hole ; the mud here is more disgreeable 
than snow in Massachusetts. My advice to all my friends is not to come to 
this country. There is not one in a hundred but what is discontented; but 
they cannot get back, having spent all their property in getting here. It is the 
most broken country that I ever saw. Poor, lean pork at twelve cents ; salt, 
four cents ; poor, dry fish, twenty cents. The corn is miserable, and we can- 
not get it ground ; we have to pound it. Those that have lanterns grate it. 
Rum, twenty-five cents a gill ; sugar, thirty-seven cents a pound ; and no molas- 
ses ! This country has been the ruin of a great many poor people ; it has un- 
done a great many poor souls forever." 

Meantime, at Washington, there had been a great increase 
in wealth and social refinement since the earlier days. Mr. 
Josiah Quincy, in his " Recollections of Washington Society 
in 1826," presents for us a polished and delightful community, 
compared to that which had preceded it. Himself a handsome 
young Bostonian, with the prestige of a name already noted, he 
found nothing but sunshine and roses in his path through the 
metropolis. Names now historic glitter through his pages; he 
went to balls under the escort of Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Webster; 
his first entertainment was at Mrs. William Wirt's, where he 
met Miss Henry, Patrick Henry's daughter, who played the 
piano and sang to the harp. The belles of the day smiled upon 
him: Miss Catherine van Rensselaer, of Albany, and Miss Cora 
Livingston, the same who in her old age, as Mrs. Barton, sold 
the great Shakespearian library to the city of Boston. The 
most conspicuous married belle of that day was known as Mrs. 
Florida White, so called because her husband represented that 
region, then new and strange. More eccentric than this sobri- 
qiiet were the genuine names in the household of Mrs. Peter, 
Q-randdaughter of Mrs. Washino^ton, and the fiercest of Feder- 



THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH. 423 

alists, who had named her daughters America, Columbia, and 
Britannia — the last by way of defiance, it was said, to Jefferson. 
With these various charmers Mr. Quincy attended many a ball 
in Washington, these entertainments then keeping modest hours 
— from eight to eleven. He saw a sight not then considered so 
modest — the introduction, in 1826, of the first waltz, danced with 
enthusiasm by Baron Stackelburg, who whirled through it with- 
out removing his huge dragoon spurs, and was applauded at the 
end for the skill with which he avoided collisions that mi^ht 
have been rather murderous. 

The young Bostonian also went to dinner-parties; some- 
times at the White House, either formal state dinners of forty 
gentlemen and ladies, or private occasions, less elaborate, where 
he alone among witnesses found the President " amusing." He 
gives also an agreeable picture of the home and household man- 
ners of Daniel Webster, not yet fallen into those questionable 
private habits which the French M. Bacourt, sixteen years after- 
wards, too faithfully chronicled. Mr. Quincy also found the 
Vice-president, John C. Calhoun, a man most agreeable in his 
own house, while Miss Calhoun had an admirable gift for polit- 
ical discussion. The presence of these eminent men lent a 
charm even to the muddy streets and scattered houses of the 
W^ashington of that day. The two branches of government 
then met in small, ill-arranged halls, the House of Representa- 
tives having huge pillars to intercept sight and sound, with no 
gallery for visitors, but only a platform but little higher than 
the floor. In this body the great Federal party had left scarcely 
a remnant of itself, Mr. Elisha Potter, of Rhode Island, describ- 
ing vividly to Mr. Quincy a caucus held when the faithful few 
had been reduced to eleven, and could only cheer themselves 
with the thought that the Christian apostles, after the desertion 
of Judas, could number no more. The Houses of Congress 
were still rather an arena of debating than for set speeches, as 
now; and they had their leaders, mostly now fallen into that 



424 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

oblivion which waits so surely on merely political fame. Daniel 
Webster, to be sure, was the great ornament of the Senate ; but 
McDuffie, of South Carolina, and Storrs, of New York, members 
of the House, had then a national reputation for eloquence, 
though they now are but the shadows of names. To these 
must be added Archer, of Virginia, too generally designated as 
" Insatiate Archer," from his fatal lono;-windedness. 

For the first time in many years the White House was 
kept in decent order again ; all about it had for 3^ears— if we 
may trust Samuel Breck's testimony — worn the slipshod, care- 
less look of a Virginia plantation. Fence -posts fell and lay 
broken on the ground for months, although they could have 
been repaired in half an hour ; and the grass of the lawns, cut at 
long intervals, was piled in large stacks before the drawing-room 
windows. Fifty thousand dollars spent on the interior in Mon- 
roe's time had produced only a slovenly splendor, while the 
fourteen thousand appropriated to Adams produced neatness at 
least. Manners shared some of the improvement, in respect to 
order and decorum at least, though something of the profuse 
Virginia cordiality may have been absent. It was an inter- 
mediate period, when, far more than now, the European forms 
were being tried, and sometimes found wanting. In Philadel- 
phia, where the social ambition was highest, Mr. William Bing- 
ham had entertainments that were held to be the most showy 
in America. He had, as in England, a row of liveried servants, 
who repeated in loud tone, from one to another, the name of 
every guest. A slight circumstance put an end to the practice. 
On the evening of a ball an eminent physician, Dr. Kuhn, drove 
to the door with his step -daughter, and was asked his name 
by the lackey. " The doctor and Miss Peggy," was the reply. 
" The doctor and Miss Peggy," was echoed by the man at the 
door, and hence by successive stages to the drawing-room. 
"The doctor and Miss Peggy" (Miss Markoe, afterwards Mrs. 
Benjamin Franklin Bache) became the joke of the town ; and 




JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
[From the painting by Da Block, owned by John C. Calhoun, Esn ] 



THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH. 427 

the practice was soon after changed, carrying with it the hum- 
bler attempts at imitation in Washington, Samuel Breck, who 
tells the story, rejoices that among the other failures in aping 
foreign manners were "the repeated attempts of our young 
dandies to introduce the mustache on the upper lip." " And 
so," he adds, " with the broadcloth gaiters and other foreign cos- 
tumes. They were neither useful nor ornamental, and would 
not take with us. So much the better." 

The President himself, in the midst of all this, lived a life 
so simple that the word Spartan hardly describes it. He was 
now sixty years old. Rising at four or five, even in winter, he 
often built his own fire, and then worked upon his correspond- 
ence and his journal, while the main part of the day was given 
to public affairs, these being reluctantly interrupted to receive 
a stream of visitors. In the evening he worked again, some- 
times soinQT to bed at eio^ht or nine even in summer. His rec- 
reations were few — bathing in the Potomac before sunrise, and 
taking a walk at the same hour, or a ride later in the day, or 
sometimes the theatre, such as it was. For social life he had 
little aptitude, though he went through the forms of it. This is 
well illustrated by one singular memorandum in his diary : " I 
went out this eveninsf in search of conversation, an art of which 
I never had an adequate idea. ... I never knew how to make, 
control, or change it. I am by nature a silent animal, and my 
dear mothers constant lesson in childhood that little children 
should be seen and not heard confirmed me in what I now 
think a bad habit." 

It is to be observed that the influence of political wire-pull- 
ing first began to be seriously felt at this period. We com- 
monly attribute its origin to Jackson, but it really began, as was 
explained in a previous chapter, with Crawford. As the end 
of Monroe's administration drew near, there were, it must be 
remembered, five candidates in the field for the succession — 
Crawford, Clay, Calhoun, Adams, and Jackson. Calhoun with- 



423 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

drew, was nominated for Vice-president, and was triumphantly 
elected ; but for President there was no choice. Jackson had 
99 electoral votes, Adams 84, Crawford 41, Clay 37. The choice 
was thrown into the House of Representatives, and took place 
February 9, 1825. Two distinguished men were- tellers, Daniel 
Webster and John Randolph. They reported that Mr. Adams 
had 13 votes. General Jackson 7, Mr. Crawford 4; and that Mr. 
Adams was therefore elected. The explanation was that Mr. 
Clay's forces had been transferred to Mr. Adams, and when, 
after his inauguration, Mr. Clay was made Secretary of State, 
the cry of "unholy coalition" was overwhelming. It was, John 
Randolph said, "a combination hitherto unheard of, of the 
Puritan and the Blackleg — of Blifil and Black George" — these 
being two characters in Fielding's " Tom Jones." This led to 
a duel between Clay and Randolph, in which neither party fell. 
But the charge remained. Jackson and Calhoun believed it 
during their whole lives, though the publication of John Ouincy 
Adams's "Diary" has made it clear that there was no real 
foundation for it. 

The influence, since called "the machine," in politics was 
systematically brought to bear against Mr. Adams during all 
the latter part of his administration. Having the reluctance 
of a high-minded statesman to win support by using patron- 
age for it, he unluckily had not that better quality which en- 
ables a warm-hearted man to secure loyal aid without raising 
a finger. The power that he thus refused to employ was 
simply used against him by his own subordinates. We know 
by the unerring evidence of his own diary that he saw clearly 
how his own rectitude was injuring him, yet never thought 
of swerving from his course. One by one the men depend- 
ent on him went over, beneath his eyes, to the camp of his 
rival ; and yet so long as each man was a good officer he 
was left untouched. Mr. Adams says in his "Diary" (under 
date of May 13, 1825), when describing his own entrance on 



THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH. 429 

office : " Of the custom-house officers throughout the Union 
two-thirds were probably opposed to my election. They were 
all now in my power, and I had been urged very earnestly from 
various quarters to sweep away my opponents, and provide with 
their places for my friends." This was what he absolutely re- 
fused to do. In these days of civil service reform we go back 
with pleasure to his example ; but the general verdict of the 
period was that this course may have been very heroic, but it 
was not war. 

It must always be remembered, moreover, in our effort to 
understand the excitement of politics fifty years ago, that the 
Presidential candidates were then nominated by Congressional 
caucus. The effect was to concentrate in one spot the excite- 
ment and the intrigues that must now be distributed through 
the nation. The result was almost wholly evil. " It places the 
President," John Quincy Adams wrote just before his election, 
" in a state of subserviency to the members of the Legislature, 
which . . . leads to a thousand corrupt cabals between the mem- 
bers of Congress and heads of departments. . . . llie only possi- 
ble chance for a head of a department to attain the Presidency 
is by ingratiating himself with the members of Congress." The 
result was that these Congressmen practically selected the Pres- 
ident. For political purposes, Washington was the focus of all 
that political agitation now distributed over various cities ; it 
was New York, Cincinnati, Chicago, all in one. It was in a 
centre of politics like this, not in the present more metropolitan 
Washington, that John Quincy Adams stood impassive— the 
object of malice, of jealousy, of envy, of respect, and perhaps 
sometimes even of love. 

He was that most unfortunate personage, an accidental Pres- 
ident — one chosen not by a majority or even a plurality of 
popular or electoral votes, but only by the process reluctantly 
employed in case these votes yield no choice. The popular 
feeling of the nation, by a plurality at least, had demanded the 



430 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

military favorite, Jackson; and through the four years of Adams's 
respectable but rather colorless administration it still persisted 
in this demand. The grave, undemonstrative President, not 
rewarding his friends, if indeed he had friends, had little chance 
against the popular favorite ; his faults hindered him ; his very 
virtues hindered him ; and though he was not, like his father, 
defeated squarely on a clear political issue, he was defeated still. 
With him we leave behind the trained statesmen-Presidents of 
the early period, and pass to the untrained, untamed, vigorous 
personality of Andrew Jackson. 



XVIJI. 

''OLD HICKORVr 

DR. VON HOLST, the most philosophic of historians, 
when he passes from the period of John Ouincy Adams 
to that of his successor, is reluctantly compelled to leave the 
realm of pure history for that of biography, and to entitle a 
chapter " The Reign of Andrew Jackson." This change of 
treatment could, indeed, hardly be helped. Under Adams all 
was impersonal, methodical, a government of laws and not of 
men. With an individuality quite as strong as that of Jackson 
— as the whole nation learned ere his life ended — it had yet 
been the training of his earlier career to suppress himself and 
be simply a perfect official. His policy aided the vast progress 
of the nation, but won for him no credit by the process. Men 
saw with wonder the westward march of an expanding people, 
but forgot to notice the sedate, passionless, orderly administra- 
tion that held the door open and kept the peace for all. In 
studying the time of Adams, w^e think of the nation ; in observ- 
ing that of Jackson, we think of Jackson himself. In him we 
see the first popular favorite of a people now well out of lead- 
ing-strings, and particularly bent on going alone. By so much 
as he differed from Adams, by so much the nation liked him 
better. His conquests had been those of war — always more daz- 
zling than those of peace ; his temperament was of fire — always 
more attractive than one of marble. He was helped by what he 
had done, and by what he had not done. Even his absence of 



432 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

diplomatic training was almost counted for a virtue, because 
all this training was then necessarily European, and the demand 
had ripened for a purely American product. 

It had been quite essential to the self-respect of the new 
republic, at the outset, that it should have at its head men who 
had as diplomatists coped with European statesmen and not 
been discomfited. This was the case with each of the early 
successors of Washington, and in view of Washington's manifest 
superiority this advantage had not been needed. Perhaps it was 
in a different way a sign of self-respect that the new republic 
should at last turn from this tradition, and 'take boldly from the 
ranks a strong and ill-trained leader, to whom all European pre- 
cedent — and, indeed, all other precedent — counted for nothing. 
In Jackson, moreover, there first appeared upon our national 
stage the since familiar figure of the self-made man. Other 
Presidents had sprung from a modest origin, but nobody had 
made an especial point of it. Nobody had urged Washington 
for office because he had been a surveyor's lad ; nobody had 
voted for Adams merely because stately old ladies designated 
him as "that cobbler's son." But when Jackson came into of- 
fice the people had just had almost a surfeit of regular training 
in their Chief Magistrates. There was a certain zest in the 
thought of a change, and the nation had it. 

It must be remembered that Jackson was in many ways far 
above the successive modern imitators who have posed in his 
imaee. He was narrow, io-norant, violent, unreasonable ; he 
punished his enemies and rewarded his friends. But he was, 
on the other hand — and his worst opponents hardly denied it — 
honest, truthful, and sincere. It was not commonly charged 
upon him that he enriched himself at the public expense, or 
that he deliberately invented falsehoods. And as he was for a 
time more bitterly hated than any one who ever occupied his 
high office, we may be very sure that these things would have 
been charged on him, had it been possible. In this respect 



"OLD hickory:' 433 

the contrast was enormous between Jackson and his imitators, 
and it explains his prolonged influence. He never was found 
out or exposed before the world, because there was nothing to 
detect or unveil ; his merits and demerits were as visible as his 
long, narrow, firmly set features, or as the old military stock that 
encircled his neck. There he was, always fully revealed ; every- 
body could see him ; the people might take him or leave him — 
and they never left him. 

Moreover, there was, after the eight years of Monroe and the 
four years of Adams, an immense popular demand for some- 
thing piquant and even amusing, and this quality men always 
found in Jackson. There was nothing in the least melodra- 
matic about him; he never posed or attitudinized — it would 
have required too much patience ; but he was always piquant. 
There was formerly a good deal of discussion as to who wrote 
the once famous "Jack Downing" letters, but we might almost 
say that they wrote themselves. Nobody was ever less of a 
humorist than Andrew Jackson, and it was therefore the more 
essential that he shoukl be the cause of humor in others. It 
was simply inevitable that during his progresses through the 
country there should be some amusing shadow evoked, some 
Yankee parody of the man, such as came from two or three 
quarters under the name of Jack Downing. The various rec- 
ords of Monroe's famous tours are as tame as the speeches 
which these expeditions brought forth, and John Ouincy Adams 
never made any popular demonstrations to chronicle ; but wher- 
ever Jackson went there went the other Jack, the crude first- 
fruits of what is now known through the world as " American 
humors." Jack Downing was Mark Twain and Hosea Biglow 
and Artemus Ward in one. The impetuous President enraged 
many and delighted many, but it is something to know that 
under him a serious people first found that it knew how to 
laugh. 

The very extreme, the perfectly needless extreme, of political 

28 



434 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

foreboding that marked the advent of Jackson furnished a back- 
ground of lurid solemnity for all this light comedy. Samuel 
Breck records in his diary that he conversed with Daniel Web- 
ster in Philadelphia, March 24, 1827, upon the prospects of the 
government. " Sir," said Mr. Webster, " if General Jackson is 
elected, the government of our country will be overthrown ; the 
judiciary will be destroyed; Mr. Justice Johnson will be made 
Chief-justice in the room of Mr. Marshall, who must soon retire, 
and then in half an hour Mr, Justice Washington and Mr. Jus- 
tice Story will resign. A majority will be left with Mr. John- 
son, and every constitutional decision hitherto made will be 
reversed." As a matter of fact, none of these results followed. 
Mr. Justice Johnson never became Chief-justice; Mr. Marshall 
retained that ofhce till his death in 1835; Story and Washing- 
ton also died in office ; the judiciary was not overthrown or 
the government' destroyed. But the very ecstasy of these fears 
stimulated the excitement of the public mind. No matter how 
extravagant the supporters of Jackson might be, they could 
hardly go farther in that direction than did the Websters in the 
other. 

But it was not the fault of the Jackson party if anybody w^ent 
beyond them in exaggeration. An English traveller, William 
E. Alexander, going in a stage-coach from Baltimore to Wash- 
ington in 1 83 1, records the exuberant conversation of six editors, 
with whom he was shut up for hours. " The gentlemen of the 
press," he says, " talked of ' going the whole hog ' for one anoth- 
er, of being ' up to the hub ' (nave) for General Jackson, who was 
' all brimstone but the head, and that was aqua-fortis,' and swore 
if any one abused him he ought to be ' set straddle on an ice- 
berg, and shot through with a streak of lightning.' " Some- 
where between the dignified despair of Daniel Webster and the 
adulatory slang of these gentry we must look for the actual 
truth about Jackson's administration. The fears of the states- 
man were not wholly groundless, for it is always hard to count 




ANDREW JACKSON. 
[Engraved by G. Kruell from the litliograpli by La Fosse, copyriglited by M. Knoedler & Co.] 



"OLD HICKORVr 437 

in advance upon the tendency of high office to make men more 
reasonable. The enthusiasm of the journaHsts had a certain 
foundation ; at any rate it was a part of their profession to hke 
stirring times, and they had now the promise of them. After 
twelve years of tolerably monotonous government, any party of 
editors in America, assembled in a stage-coach, would have 
showered epithets of endearment on the man who eave such 
promise in the way of lively items. No acute journalist could 
help seeing that a man had a career before him who was called 
"Old Hickory" by three-quarters of the nation; and who made 
" Hurrah for Jackson!" a cry so potent that it had the force of 
a popular decree. 

There was, indeed, unbounded room for popular enthusiasm 
in the review of Jackson's early career. Born in such obscurity 
that it is doubtful to this day whether that event took place in 
South Carolina, as he himself claimed, or on the North Carolina 
side of the line, as Mr. Parton thinks, he had a childhood of 
poverty and ignorance. He was taken prisoner as a mere boy 
during the Revolution, and could never forget that he had been 
wounded by a British officer whose boots he had refused to 
brush. Afterwards, in a frontier community, he was successively 
farmer, shopkeeper, law student, lawyer, district attorney, judge, 
and Congressman, being first Representative from Tennessee, 
and then Senator — and all before the age of thirty-one. In 
Congress Albert Gallatin describes him as " a tall, lank, uncouth- 
looking personage, with long locks of hair hanging over his 
brows and face, and a queue down his back tied in an eel-skin ; 
his dress singular, his manners and deportment those of a back- 
woodsman," He remained, however, but a year or two in all at 
Philadelphia — then the seat of national government — and after- 
wards became a planter in Tennessee, fought duels, subdued 
Tecumseh and the Creek Indians, winning finally the great 
opportunity of his life by being made a major-general in the 
United States army on May 31, 18 14. He now had his old 



438 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

captors, the British, with whom to deal, and he entered into the 
work with a rehsh. By way of preliminary he took Pensacola, 
without any definite authority, from the Spaniards, to whom it 
belonged, and from the English whom they harbored ; and then 
turned, without orders, without support, and without supplies, 
to undertake the defence of New Orleans. 

Important as was this city, and plain as it was that the 
British threatened it, the national authorities had done nothing 
to defend it. The impression prevailed at Washington that it 
must already have been taken, but that the President would not 
let it be known. The Washington RepiiHicau of January 17, 
18 1 5, said, " That Mr. Madison will find it convenient and will 
finally determine to abandon the State of Louisiana we have 
not a doubt." A New York newspaper of January 30th, three 
weeks after New Orleans had been saved, said, " It is the gen- 
eral opinion here that the city of New Orleans must fall." Ap- 
parently but one thing had averted its fall — the energy and will 
of Andrew Jackson. On his own responsibility he declared 
martial law, impressed soldiers, seized powder and supplies, built 
fortifications of cotton bales, if nothing else came to hand. 
When the news of the battle of New Orleans came to the seat 
of government it was almost too bewilderinor for belief. The 
British veterans of the Peninsula war, whose march wherever 
they had landed had heretofore seemed a holiday parade, were 
repulsed in a manner so astounding that their loss, in killed and 
wounded, was more than two thousand, while that of the Ameri- 
cans was but thirteen (January 8, 18 15). By a single stroke the 
national self-respect was restored; and Henry Clay, at Paris, 
said, " Now I can go to England without mortification." 

All these things must be taken into account in estimating 
what Dr. Von Hoist calls " the reign of Andrew Jackson." Af- 
ter this climax of military success he was for a time employed 
on frontier service, again went to Florida to fight Englishmen 
and Spaniards, practically conquering that region in a few 



''OLD hickory:' 439 

months, but this time with an overwhelming force. Ahxady 
his impetuosity had proved to have a troublesome side to it; 
he had violated neutral territory, had hung two Indians without 
justification, and had put to death, with no authority, two Eng- 
lishmen, Ambrister and Arbuthnot. These irrearularities did 
not harm him in the judgment of his admirers; they seemed in 
the line of his character, and helped more than they hurt him. 
In the winter of 1823-24 he was again chosen a Senator from 
Tennessee. Thenceforth he was in the field as a candidate for 
the Presidency, with two things to aid him — his own immense 
popularity and a skilful friend. This friend was one William 
B. Lewis, a man in whom all the arts of the modern wire-puller 
seemed to be born full-^rown. 

There was at that time (1824) no real division in parties. 
The Federalists had been effectually put down, and every man 
who aspired to office claimed to be Democratic- Republican. 
Nominations were irregularly made, sometimes by a Congres- 
sional caucus, sometimes by State Legislatures. Tennessee, and 
afterwards Pennsylvania, nominated Jackson. When it came to 
the election, he proved to be by all odds the popular candidate. 
Professor W. G. Sumner, counting up the vote of the people, 
finds 155,800 votes for Jackson, 105,300 for Adams, 44,200 for 
Crawford, 46,000 for Clay. Even with this strong popular vote 
before it, the House of Representatives, balloting by States, 
elected, as has been seen, John Ouincy Adams. Seldom in our 
history has the cup of power come so near to the lips of a can- 
didate and been dashed away again. Yet nothing is surer in a 
republic than a certain swing of the pendulum, afterwards, in fa- 
vor of any candidate to whom a special injustice has been done ; 
and in the case of a popular favorite like Jackson this recoil 
migrht have been foreseen to be irresistible. His election four 
years later was almost a foregone conclusion, but, as if to make 
it wholly sure, there came up the rumor of a " corrupt bargain " 
between the successful candidate and Mr. Clay, whose forces 



440 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

had indeed joined with those of Mr. Adams to make a majority. 
For General Jackson there coukl be nothing more fortunate. 
The mere ghost of a corrupt bargain is worth many thousand 
votes to the lucky man whose supporters conjure up the ghost. 

When it came the turn of the Adams party to be defeated, 
in 1 828, they attributed this result partly to the depravity of the 
human heart, partly to the tricks of Jackson, and partly to the 
unfortunate temperament of Mr. Adams. The day after a can- 
didate is beaten everybody knows why it was, and says it was 
just what any one might have foreseen. Ezekiel Webster, writ- 
ing from New Hampshire, laid the result chi-efly on the nominee, 
whom everybody disliked, and who would persist in leaving his 
bitter opponents in office. The people, Webster said, "always 
supported his cause from a cold sense of duty, and not from any 
liking of the man. We soon satisfy ourselves," he added, " that 
we have discharged our duty to the cause of any man when we 
do not entertain for him one personal kind feeling, nor cannot, 
unless we disembowel ourselves, like a trussed turkey, of all that 
is human within us." There is, indeed, no doubt that Mr. 
Adams helped on his own defeat, both by his defects and by 
what would now be considered his virtues. The trouble, how- 
ever, lay further back. Ezekiel Webster thought that "if there 
had been at the head of affairs a man of popular character, like 
Mr. Clay, or any man whom we were not compelled by our nat- 
ures, instinct, and fixed fate to dislike, the result would have 
been different." But we can now see that all this would really 
have made no difference at all. Had Mr. Adams been person- 
ally the most attractive of men, instead of being a conscientious 
iceberg, the same result would have followed, and the people 
would have felt that Jackson's turn had come. 

Accordingly, the next election, that of 1828, was easily set- 
tled. Jackson had 178 electoral votes, Adams but St,; — more 
than two to one. Adams had not an electoral vote south of the 
Potomac or west of the Alleghanies, though Daniel Webster, 



"OLD hickory:' 441 

writing to Jeremiah Mason, had predicted that he would carry 
six Western and Southern States. In Georma no Adams ticket 
was even nominated, he being there unpopular for one of his 
best acts — the protection of the Cherokees. On the other hand, 
but one Jackson elector was chosen from New England, and he 
by less than two hundred majority. This was in the Maine dis- 
trict that included Bowdoin College, and I have heard from an 
old friend of mine the tale how he, being then a student at Bow- 
doin, tolled the college bell at midnight to express the shame of 
the students, although the elector thus chosen (Judge Preble) 
was the own uncle of this volunteer sexton. It would have re- 
quired many college bells to announce the general wrath of 
New England, which was not diminished by the fact that Mr. 
Calhoun, another S outh erner^ was chosen Vice-president over 
Richard Rush. To be sure, Mr. Calhoun had filled the same 
office under John Ouincy Adams, but then there was a North- 
ern man for President. For the first time the lines seemed dis- 
tinctly drawn for the coming sectional antagonism. 

But even this important fact was really quite subordinate, 
for the time being, in men's minds. The opposition to Jackson, 
like his popularity, was personal. It was not a mere party mat- 
ter. The older statesmen distrusted him, without much regard 
to their political opinions. When Monroe asked Jefferson in 
18 18 if it would not be well to give Jackson the embassy to 
Russia, Jefferson utterly disapproved it. " He would breed you 
a quarrel," he said, " before he had been there a month." At a 
later period Jefferson said to Daniel Webster : " I feel much 
alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson President. 
He is one of the most unfit men I know of for such a place. 
He has had very little respect for laws or constitutions, and is, 
in fact, an able military chief. His passions are terrible. When 
I was President of the Senate he was a Senator, and he could 
never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings. I have 
seen him attempt it repeatedly, and as often choke with rage. 

29 



442 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

His passions are no doubt cooler now ; he has been much tried 
since I knew him ; but he is a dangerous man." And danger- 
ous indeed the pubhc office-holders soon found him. As has 
been already seen, a large part of those who held office under 
Adams were already partisans of Jackson ; but the rest soon 
discovered that a changed policy had come in. Between March 
4, 1829, and March 22, 1830, 491 postmasters and 230 other of- 
ficers were removed, making, as it was thought, with their sub- 
ordinates, at least two thousand political changes. Mr. Sumner 
well points out that it is unfair to charge this, as we often do, 
solely upon Jackson. Crawford, as has already been seen, pre- 
pared the way for the practice ; it had been perfected in the 
local politics of New York and Pennsylvania. It was simply a 
disease which the nation must undergo — must ultimately over- 
throw, indeed, unless overthrown by it ; but it will always be 
identified, by coincidence of time at least, with the Presidency 
of Andrew Jackson. If not the father of the evil, he will always 
stand in history as its godfather. 

It is a curious fact in political history that a public man is 
almost always, to a certain extent, truthfully criticised by the 
party opposed to him. His opponents may exaggerate, they 
may distort, but they are rarely altogether wrong; their criti- 
cism generally goes to the right point, and finds out the weak 
spot. Jackson was as vehemently attacked as Jefferson, and 
by the same class of people, but the points of the criticism 
were wholly different. Those w^ho had habitually denounced 
Jefferson for being timid in action were equally hard on Jack- 
son for brimming over with superfluous courage, and being 
ready to slap every one in the face. The discrimination of 
charges was just. A merely vague and blundering assailant 
would have been just as likely to call Jackson a coward and Jef- 
ferson a fire-eater, which would have been absurd. The sum- 
ming up of the Federalist William Sullivan, written in 1834, 
was not so very far from the sober judgment of posterity. " An- 



"OLD hickory:' 



443 



drew Jackson. ... is a sort of litsiis reipublicce, held by no rules 
or laws, and who honestly believes his sycophants that he was 
born to command. With a head and heart not better than 
Thomas Jefferson had, but freed from the inconvenience of that 
gentleman's constitutional timidity, and familiar with the sword, 
he has disclosed the real purpose of the American people in 
fighting the battles of the Revolution and establishing a nation- 
al republic, viz., that the will of Andrew Jackson shall be the 
law and only law of the republic." 

Really General Jackson himself would not have greatly ob- 
jected to this estimate, could he have had patience to read it. 
He was singularly free from hypocrisy or concealment, was 
not much of a talker, and took very little trouble to invent 
fine names for what he did. But on another point where he 
was as sharply criticised he was very vulnerable ; like most 
ignorant and self-willed men, he was easily managed by those 
who understood him. Here again was an illustration of the dis- 
cernment of even vehement enemies. Nobody charged Jeffer- 
son with being over-influenced by a set of inferior men, though 
all the opposition charged Jackson with it. The reason was 
that in this last case it was true ; and during the greater part of 
Jackson's two administrations there was constant talk of what 
Webster called the " cabinet improper," as distinct from the 
cabinet proper — what was known in popular phrase as the 
" kitchen cabinet." Here again came in the felicity of Jack 
Downing's portraiture. The familiarity with which this imagi- 
nary ally pulled off the President's boots or wore his old clothes 
hardly surpassed the undignified attitudes popularly attributed 
to Swartwout and Hill and Van Buren. 

On the day of his inauguration the President was received 
in Washington with an ardor that might have turned a more 
modest head. On the day when the new administration began 
(March 4, 1829), Daniel Webster wrote to his sister-in-law, with 
whom he had left his children that winter: "To-day we have 



444 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

had the inauguration. A monstrous crowd of people is in the 
city. I never saw anything like it before. Persons have come 
five hundred miles to see General Jackson, and they really seem 
to think that the country is rescued from some frightful dan- 
ger." It is difficult now to see what this peril w^as supposed to 
be ; but we know that the charges of monarchical tendency 
made against John Adams had been renewed against his son — 
a renewal that seems needless in case of a man so scrupulously 
republican that he w^ould not use a seal ring; and so unambi- 
tious that he aiways sighed after the quieter walks of literature. 
Equally unjust was the charge of extra-vagance against the 
younger Adams, who kept the White House in better order 
than- his predecessor on less than half the appropriation — an 
economy wholly counterbalanced in some minds by the fact 
that he had put in a billiard-table. But how^ever all this may 
have been, the fact is certain that no President had yet entered 
the White House amid such choruses of delight as were called 
forth by Jackson; nor did it happen again until his pupil, Van 
Buren, yielded, amid equal popular enthusiasm, to another mili- 
tary hero, Harrison. 

For the social life of Washington the President had one ad- 
vantage which was altogether unexpected, and seemed difficult 
of explanation by anything in his earlier career. He had at his 
command the most courteous and agreeable manners. Even be- 
fore the election of Adams, Daniel Webster had written to his 
brother: "General Jackson's manners are better than those of 
any of the candidates. He is grave, mild, and reserved. My w'ife 
is for him decidedly." And long after, when the President was 
to pass in review before those who were perhaps his most im- 
placable opponents, the ladies of Boston, we have the testimony 
of the late Josiah Quincy, in his " Figures from the Past," that 
the personal bearing of this obnoxious official was most unw'ill- 
ingly approved. Mr. Quincy was detailed by Governor Lincoln, 
on whose military staff he was, to attend President Jackson 




DANIEL WEBSTER. 
[From the painting by G. P. A. Healy, now in Faneuil Hall, Boston.] 



''OLD HICKORY." 447 

everywhere when visiting Boston in 1833; and this narrator 
testifies that, with every prejudice against Jackson, he found 
him essentially " a knightly personage— prejudiced, narrow, mis- 
taken on many points, it might be, but vigorously a gentleman 
in his high sense of honor and in the natural straightforward 
courtesies which are easily distinguished from the veneer of 
policy." Sitting erect on his horse, a thin stiff type of military 
strength, he carried with him in the streets a bearing of such 
dignity that staid old Bostonians who had refused even to look 
upon him from their windows would finally be coaxed into tak- 
ing one peep, and would then hurriedly bring forward their lit- 
tle daughters to wave their handkerchiefs. He wrought, Mr. 
Ouincy declares, " a mysterious charm upon old and young;" 
showed, although in feeble health, a great consideration for 
others ; and was in private a really agreeable companion. It 
appears from these reminiscences that the President was not 
merely the cause of wit in others, but now and then appreciated 
it himself, and that he used to listen with delight to the reading 
of the " Jack Downing " letters, laughing heartily sometimes, 
and declaring, " The Vice-president must have written that. 
Depend upon it. Jack Downing is only Van Buren in masquer- 
ade." It is a curious fact that the satirist is already the better 
remembered of the two, although Van Buren was in his day so 
powerful as to preside over the official patronage of the nation, 
and to be called the " Little Magician." 

But whatever personal attractions of manner President 
Jackson may have had, he threw away his social leadership at 
Washington by a single act of what may have been misapplied 
chivalry. This act was what Mr. Morse has tersely called " the 
imiportation of Mrs. Eaton's visiting list into the politics and 
government of the country." It was the nearest approach yet 
made under our masculine political institutions to those eminent 
scandals which constitute the minor material of court historians 
in Europe. The heroine of the comedy, considered merely as 



448 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Peggy O'Neil, daughter of a Washington innkeeper — or as Mrs. 
Timberlake, the wife of a naval purser who had committed sui- 
cide because of strong drink — might have seemed more Hke a 
personage out of one of Fielding's novels than as a feature in 
the history of an administration ; but when fate at last made her 
Mrs. Secretary Eaton she became one who could disturb cab- 
inets and annihilate friendships. It was not merely out of re- 
gard for her personal wrongs that all this took place, but there 
was a lonoj historv behind it. There had been a little irreofu- 
larity' about President Jackson's own marriage. He had es- 
poused his wife after a supposed divorce from a previous hus- 
band ; and when the divorce really took place the ceremony had 
to be repeated. Moreover, as the divorce itself had originally 
been based on some scandal about Jackson, he was left in a 
state of violent sensitiveness on the whole matrimonial question. 
Mrs. Eaton had nothing in the world to do with all this, but she 
sot the benefit of it. The mere fact that she to whom the Presi- 
dent had good-naturedly nodded as Peggy O'Neil had been cen- 
sured by his own oflBcials, after she had become the wife of one 
of them, was enough to enrage him, and he doubtless looked 
across the fireplace at the excellent Mrs. Jackson — a plain, es- 
timable backwoodswoman, who sat smoking her corn-cob pipe 
in the opposite corner — and swore to himself, and very probably 
aloud, that Peggy O'Neil should be sustained. 

For once he overestimated his powers. He had conquered 
Indian tribes and checked the army of Great Britain, but the 
ladies of Washington society were too much for him. Every 
member of his cabinet expressed the utmost approval of his 
position, but they said with .one accord that those -matters must 
be left to their wives. Mrs. Donelson, his own niece — that is, 
the wdfe of his nephew, and the lady who received company for 
him at the White House — would not receive Mrs. Eaton, and 
was sent back to Tennessee. Mrs. Calhoun, the wife of the 
Vice-president, took the same attitude, and ruined thereby her 



''OLD HICKORVr 449 

husband's political prospects, Mr. Calhoun being utterly super- 
seded in the President's good graces by Mr. Van Buren, who, 
being a widower, could pay attention to the offending fair one 
without let or hinderance. Through his influence Baron Kru- 
dener, the Russian Minister, and Mr. Vaughan, the British Min- 
ister, both bachelors, gave entertainments at which " Bellona," 
as the newspapers afterwards called the lady, from her influence 
in creating strife, was present. It did no good; every dance in 
which she stood up to take part was, in the words of a Wash- 
ington letter- writer, "instantly dissolved into its original ele- 
ments," and though she was placed at the head of the supper- 
table, every lady present ignored her very existence. Thus the 
amenities of Van Buren were as powerless as the anger of Jack- 
son ; but the astute Secretary won the President's heart, and 
with it that of his whole immediate circle — cabinet proper and 
cabinet improper. It was one of the things that turned the 
scale between Calhoun and Van Buren, putting the New York 
"magician" in line for the Presidential succession; and in this 
way Peggy O'Neil had an appreciable influence on the political 
history of the nation. It was fortunate that she did not also 
lead to foreio'n embroilments, for the wife of the Dutch Minister 

O 

once refused to sit next to her at a public entertainment, upon 
which the President threatened to demand the Minister's recall. 
All this time Jackson himself remained utterly free from scan- 
dal, nor did his enemies commonly charge him with anything 
beyond ill-timed quixotism. But it shows how feminine influ- 
ence creeps inside of all political barriers, and recalls Charles 
Churchill's couplet — 

" Women, who've oft as sovereigns graced the land, 
But never governed well at second-hand." 

The two acts with which the administration of President 
Jackson will be longest identified are his dealings with South 
Carolina in respect to nullification, and his long warfare with 

30 



450 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

the United States Bank. The first brought the New England 
States back to him, and the second took them away again. He 
perhaps won rather more applause than he merited by the one 
act, and more condemnation than was just for the other. Let 
us first consider the matter of nullification. When various 
Southern States — Georgia at first, not South Carolina, taking 
the lead — had quarrelled with the tariff of 1828, and openly 
threatened to set it aside, they evidently hoped for the co-opera- 
tion of the President ; or at least for that silent acquiescence he 
had shown when Georgia had been almost equally turbulent on 
the Indian question, and he would not interfere, as his predeces- 
sor had done, to protect the treaty rights of the Indian tribes. 
The whole South was therefore startled when he gave, at a ban- 
quet on Jefferson's birthday (April 13, 1830), a toast that now 
seems commonplace — "The Federal Union; it must be pre- 
served." But this was not all ; when the time came he took 
vigorous, if not altogether consistent, steps to preserve it. 

When, in November, 1832, South Carolina for the first time 
officially voted that certain tariff acts were null and void in that 
State, the gauntlet of defiance was fairly thrown down, and Jack- 
son picked it up. He sent General Scott to take command at 
Charleston, with troops near by, and two gun-boats at hand ; he 
issued a dignified proclamation, written by Livingston (Decem- 
ber 10, 1832), which pronounced the act of South Carolina con- 
tradictory to the Constitution, unauthorized by it, and destructive 
of its aims. So far, so good ; but unfortunately the President 
had, the week before (December 4, 1832), sent a tariff message to 
Congress, of which John Quincy Adams wrote, " It goes far to 
dissolve the Union into its original elements, and is in substance 
a complete surrender into the hands of the nullifiers of South 
Carolina." Then came Mr. Clay's compromise tariff of 1833, 
following in part the line indicated by this message, and achiev- 
ing, as Mr. Calhoun said, a victory for nullification — leaving the 
matter a drawn game, at any rate. The action of Jackson, being 



''OLD hickory:' 451 

thus accompanied, settled nothing; it was Hke vaHantly ordering 
a burglar out of your house with a pistol, and adding the sug- 
gestion that he will find a portion of the family silver on the 
hall table, ready packed for his use, as he goes out. 

Nevertheless, the burglar w^as gone for the moment, and the 
President had the credit of it. He had already been re-elected 
by an overwhelming majority in November, 1832, receiving 219 
electoral votes, and Clay 49 ; w^hile Floyd had the 1 1 votes of 
South Carolina (which still chose electors by its Legislature — 
a practice now abandoned), and Wirt the 7 of Vermont. Van 
Buren was chosen Vice-president, being nominated in place of 
Calhoun by the Democratic National Convention, which now 
for the first time came into operation. The President was thus 
at his high-water mark of popularity — always a dangerous time 
for a public man. His vehement nature accepted his re-election 
as a proof that he was right in everything, and he grew more 
self-confident than ever. More imperiously than ever, he or- 
dered about friends and opponents ; and his friends repaid it by 
guiding his affairs, unconsciously to himself. Meantime he was 
encountering another enemy of greater power, because more 
silent, than Southern nullification, and he was drifting on to his 
final contest with the United States Bank. 

Sydney Smith says that every Englishman feels himself 
able, without instruction, to drive a pony-chaise, conduct a small 
farm, and edit a newspaper. The average American assumes, 
in addition to all this, that he is competent to manage a bank. 
President Jackson claimed for himself in this respect no more 
than his fellows ; the difference was in strength of will and in 
possession of power. A man so ignorant that a member of his 
own family, according to Mr. Trist, used to say that the gen- 
eral did not believe the world was round, might easily convince 
himself that he knew all about banking. As he had, besides all 
this, very keen observation and great intuitive judgment of char- 
acter, he was probably right in his point of attack. There is 



452 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

little doubt that the bank of the United States, under Nicholas 
Biddle, concentrated in itself an enormous power ; and it spent 
in four years, by confession of its directors, $58,000 in what 
they called " self-defence " against " politicians." When, on July 
10, 1832, General Jackson, in a message supposed to have been 
inspired by Amos Kendall, vetoed the bill renewing the charter 
of the bank, he performed an act of courage, taking counsel 
with his instincts. But when in the year following he per- 
formed the act known as the " removal of the deposits," or, in 
other words, caused the public money to be no longer deposited 
in the National Bank and its twenty- fiv.e branches, but in a 
variety of State banks instead, then he took counsel of his 

orance. 

The act originally creating the bank had, indeed, given the 
Secretary of the Treasury authority to remove these deposits at 
any time, he afterwards giving to Congress his reasons. The 
President had in vain urged Congress to order the change; 
that body declined. He had in vain urged the Secretary of the 
Treasury to remove them, and on his refusing, had displaced 
the official himself. The President at last found a Secretary of 
the Treasury (Roger B. Taney) to order the removal,, or rather 
cessation, of deposits. The consequence, immediate or remote, 
was an immense galvanizing into existence of State banks, and 
ultimately a vast increase of paper- money. The Sub-Treasury 
system had not then been thought of; there was no proper 
place of deposit for the public funds ; their possession was a 
direct stimulus to speculation ; and the President's cure was 
worse than the disease. All the vast inflation of 1835 and 1836 
and the business collapse of 1837 were due to the fact not mere- 
ly that Andrew Jackson brought all his violent and persistent 
will to bear against the United States Bank, but that when he 
got the power into his own hands he did not know what to do 
with it. Not one of his biographers — hardly even a bigoted 
admirer, so far as I know — now claims that his course in this 



''OLD HICKORY." 453 

respect was anything but a mistake. " No monster bank," says 
Professor W. G. Sumner, "under the most malicious manage- 
ment, could have produced as much havoc, either political or 
financial, as this system produced while it lasted." If the b^nk 
was, as is now generally admitted, a dangerous institution, Jack- 
k son was in the rio;ht to resist it; he was riofht even in disre8;ard- 
^ ing the enormous flood of petitions that poured in to its sup- 
\ port. But to oppose a dangerous bank does not necessarily 
t make one an expert in banking. The utmost that can be said 
^ in favor of his action is that the calamitous results showed the 
great power of the institution he overthrew, and that if he had 
let it alone the final result might have been as bad. 

Two new States were added to the Union in President Jack- 
*^/ son's time — Arkansas (1836) and Michigan (1837). The popu- 
lation of the United States in 1830 had risen to nearly thirteen 
millions (12,866,020). There was no foreign war during his ad- 
ministration, although one with France was barely averted, and 
no domestic contest except the second Seminole war against 
the Florida Indians — a contest in which these combatants held 
their ground so well, under the half-breed chief Osceola, that he 
himself was only captured by the violation of a flag of truce, 
and that even to this day, as the Indian Commissioners tell us, 
some three hundred of the tribe remain in Florida. The war 
being equally carried on against fugitive slaves called Maroons, 
who had intermarried w^ith the Indians, did something to pre- 
pare the public mind for a new agitation which was to remould 
American political parties, and to modify the Constitution of 
the nation. 

It must be remembered that the very air began to be filled 
in Jackson's time with rumors of insurrections and uprisings in 
different parts of the world. The French revolution of the 
Three Days had roused all the American people to sympathy, 
and called forth especial enthusiasm in such cities as Baltimore, 
Richmond, and Charleston. The Polish revolution had excited 



454 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

universal interest, and John Randolph had said, " The Greeks 
are at your doors," All these things were being discussed at 
every dinner-table, and the debates in Virginia as to the neces- 
sity of restricting the growing intelligence of the slaves had 
added to the agitation. Iw the session of 1829-30 a bill had 
passed the Virginia Assembly by one majority, and had failed 
in the Senate, prohibiting slaves from being taught to read or 
write ; and the next year it had passed almost unanimously. 
There had been, about the same time, alarms of insurrection in 
North Carolina, so that a party of slaves were attacked and 
killed by the inhabitants of Newbern ; alarms in Maryland, so 
that fifty blacks had been imprisoned on the Eastern Shore ; 
alarms in Louisiana, so that reinforcements of troops had been 
ordered to Baton Rouge ; and a traveller had written even from 
Richmond, Virginia, on the 12th of February, that there were 
constant fears of insurrections and special patrols. Then came 
the insurrection of Nat Turner in Virginia — an uprising de- 
scribed minutely by myself elsewhere; the remarkable inflam- 
matory pamphlet called " Walker's Appeal," by a Northern 
colored man — a piece of writing surpassed in lurid power by 
nothinof in the literature of the French Revolution; and, more 
potent than either or both of these, the appearance (January i, 
1 831) of the first number of the Liberator in Boston. When 
Garrison wrote, " I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will 
not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard," 
Andrew Jackson for once met a will firmer than his own, be- 
cause more steadfast, and moved by a loftier purpose. Thence- 
forth, for nearly half a century, the history of the nation was 
the history of the antislavery contest. 

The administration of Jackson will thus be most remarkable, 
after all, not because of any triumph of his will, but because of 
something that arose in spite of it — an agitation so far opposed 
to his wishes, in fact, that he wished for the passage of a law 
excluding antislavery publications from the mails. It was an 



-OLD HICKORY r 455 

agitation destined to draw new lines, establish new standards, 
and create new reputations ; and it is to be remembered that the 
Democratic President did not abhor it more, on the one side, 
than did his fiercest Federalist critics on the other. One of 
the ablest of them, William Sullivan, at the close of his " Fa- 
miliar Letters on Public Characters," after exhausting language 
to depict the outrages committed by President Jackson, points 
out as equally objectionable the rising antislavery movement, 
and predicts that, if it has its full course, " even an Andrew 
Jackson may be a blessing." But of the wholly new series of 
events which were to date from this agitation neither Sullivan 
nor Jackson had so much as a glimpse. These pages may well 
close, for the present, with the dawn of that great revolution. 



INDEX. 



Abbott, Dr. C. C, 26. 

Abenaki Indians, 186 ; their treaty, 187. 

Abercrombie, General James, 191. 

Acadia, 186, 189. 

Act of Navigation, the, 217. 

Adams, Abigail, quoted, 252, 254; also, 271, 
312, 322, 339, 340, 344. 

Adams, Charles Francis, on the Monroe doc- 
trine, 403. 

Adams, John : his view of town-meetings, 240 ; 
his election as President, 332 ; his character, 
336 ; his portrait, 337 ; his wife, 339 ; his 
cabinet, 340 ; his policy towards France, 340 ; 
his rupture with his party, 343 ; his corre- 
spondence with Mercy Warren, 351; his old 
age, 359; also, 240, 253, 254. 

Adams, John Quincy, quoted, 393, 402 ; vote 
for Missouri Compromise, 393 ; presidency 
of, 405 ; portrait of, 409 ; internal improve- 
ments recommended by, 417; the same ac- 
complished, 418 ; entertainments of, 424 ; 
circumstances of his election, 427, 439 ; his 
policy, 428 ; his defeat, 430, 440 ; his want 
of popularity, 440; also, 431, 433, 442. 

Adams, Mrs. John Quincy, 396. 

"Adams and Liberty," song of, 342. 

Adams, Samuel, 254, 293, 304, 335. 

Adolphus, Gustavus, 167. 

"Adventurer," the word, 146. 

Alabama admitted as a State, 393. 

Alexander VI., Pope, bulls of, 75, 108. 

Alexander, William E., 415, 434. 

Algerine pirates, 297. 

Algonquins, the, 132. 

Aliaco, P. de, 55. 

Alien and Sedition Laws, 343, 350. 

Allen, Ethan, 251. 



Alligators, early descriptions of, 87. 

Ambrister, R. C, 390, 439. 

American flora, 217; finance, 320; literature, 

398 ; physique, 325 ; seamen impressed, 366. 
Americans, the first, i. 
Ames, Fisher, 300, 319, 398. 
Amidas, Philip, 97. 
Anderson, Professor B. B., 33. 
Andre, Major John, 291. 
Andros, Governor Edmund, and the Boston 

people (figured), 221 ; also, 184, 215, 220, 

222, 223. 
Andros, Lady, 220. 
Anghiera, P. M. d' (Peter Martyr), 56, 59, 69, 

70, 71, 82, 83, 120. 
Anne, Queen, 185. 
" Antiquitates Americance," 28, 42. 
Arbuthnot, A., 390, 439. 
Archer, W. S., 424. 
Afchitecture in colonies, 233. 
Aristophanes, 194. 
Aristotle's narrow sea, 55. 
Armistead, Colonel George, 377. 
Army, Revolutionary, organization of, 257 ; 

condition of, 258 ; Washington's views of, 

259 ; drilled by Steuben, 286 ; disbanded, 

293 ; statistics of, 2S5, 292. 
Arnold, Benedict, 43, 251, 263, 291. 
Arnold, Matthew, 194. 
Asher, Dr., 83. 
Asiatics in America, 23, 24. 
Astor, John Jacob, 350. 
Avalon, colony of, 165. 
Aztecs, 2, 4, 17, 19, 24, 63. 



Baccalaos, the„ 82, 120. 
Bache, Mrs. B. F., 424. 
Bacon, Lord, 84. 



458 



INDEX. 



Bacon, Nathaniel, Jr., i8o. 

Bacourt, M., 423. 

Bagot, Sir Charles, 396. 

Bahia, alleged column at, 42. 

Balboa. (See Nuiiez, Vasco.) 

Baltimore, Cecil, Lord, portrait of, 166 ; also, 

170, 19S. 
Baltimore, George, Lord, 165. 
Baltimore founded, 165 ; "horrors of," 372. 
Bancroft, George, 28, 46, 109, 225, 272. 
Bancroft, H. H., 4. 
Bandelier, A. F., 5, 8, 13. 
Bank, U. S., 350, 452, 453. 
Barclay, Robert, 204. 
Barker, Jacob, 376. 
Barlow, Arthur, 97, 398. 
Barton, Mrs. (See Livingston, Cora.) 
Basque fishermen, 120. 
Beamish, C. C, 42. 
Beaujour, Chevalier de, 325. 
Becher, Captain, 62. 
Behring Strait, width of, 24. 
Belknap, Dr. Jeremy, quoted, 190. 
Berkeley, Governor William, 179, 201. 
Bernaldez, Andres, 123. 
Bimini, island of, 71. 
Bingham, Mrs., portrait, 323. 
Bingham, William, 424. 
Birkbeck, Captain Morris, 414. 
" Black Sally," 347. 
Blaxton, William, 202. 
Block, Adrian, 152. 
Bombazen, an Indian chief, 174. 
Bonaparte, Napoleon, Federalist sermon against, 

370; his decrees, 355, 365 ; also, 379. 
Boone, Daniel, 421. 

Boston, settlement of, 162 ; evacuation of, 260. 
Bourbourg, Brasseur de, 18, 19. 
Bowdoin, Governor James, 313. 
Bowling-alley built by a clergyman, 195. 
Braddock, General Edward, 189. 
Bradford, Governor William, 152, 155, 158, 195. 
Bradley, Thomas, 82. 
Bradstreet, Governor Simon, 191, 222. 
Brazil, 75, 76. 
Brebeuf, Pere, 125. 

Breck, Samuel, quoted, 424, 427, 434. 
Breedon, Captain Thomas, 218. 
Brehan, Madame de, 312. 
Breton fishermen, the, 84, 120. 
Brewster, Elder William, 158, 195. 
Brissot de Warville, J. P.', 312. 
Bristol, R. L, rock at, 44; figured, 46. 
British, plans of, in Revolutionary War, 286. 



British Yoke, the, 216. 

Bromfield, Henry, 349. 

Brooks, Rev. C. T., 43. 

Brooks, C. W., 24. 

Browne, Sir Thomas, 227. 

Bryant, W. C, 190, 400. 

Buccaneers, 90, 98, 104. 

Bumstead, Jeremiah, 174. 

Bunker Hill, Battle of, 256, 257. 

Burgoyne, General John, 253, 286, 287. 

Burke, Edmund, 288, 305, 335. 

Burlington, Vt., vase found at (figured), 22, 25. 

Burr, Aaron, 343, 344, 355 ; portrait of, 357. 

Burras, Anne, 149. 

Buttrick, Major, 246. 

C. 

Cabeza de Vaca. (See Nufiez, Alvar.) 

Cabinet of Washington, 312. 

Cabot, George, 372. 

Cabot, J. E., 41, 49. 

Cabot, John, 77, 80, 81, 82. 

Cabot, Sebastian, 64, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83. 

Cabot, Zuan (John), Si. 

Cabots, the, 78, 104, 120. 

Ciicafitego, the, captured by Drake, 94. 

Calhoun, John C, portrait of, 425 ; his opin- 
ions, 398, 402; Vice-president, 423, 441, 
449 ; quoted, 450. 

Calhoun, Miss, 423. 

Calhoun, Mrs., 448. 

California visited by Drake, 96. 

Calvert, Cecil (Lord Baltimore), portrait of, 166. 

Calvert, George (Lord Baltimore), 165. 

Calvert, Governor Leonard, 165. 

Cambridge, Mass., settled, 162; "Tory Row" 
in, 238. 

Canada, derivation of word, ill ; attacks on, 
186 ; invasions of, 263, 372 ; surrender of, by 
France, 191, 241 ; influence of this surrender, 
227. 

Canals, introduction of, 420. 

Candidates, nomination of, 429. 

Canning, George, 335, 403. 

Carleton, Sir Guy, 291. 

Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, 152. 

Carolina, settlement of, 212; division of, 213. 

Carr, Lucien, 176. 

Carroll, Mr., 376. 

Carter, James, 82. 

Carthagena captured by Drake, TOO. 

Cartier, J., portrait of, III ; setting up a cross 
(figured), 113; also, 108, no, 112, 121, 130. 

Cartwright, Colonel Thomas, 218. 



INDEX. 



459 



Carver, Jonathan, 158. 

Castin, St., 183. 

Cathay, iii. 

Catholic and Huguenot clergy (figured), 121. 

Cavendish, Thomas, 102 ; his portrait, 102 ; 
his capture of the Santa Anna (figured), 
103. 

Chaac-AIol, statue of (figured), 20, 21. 

Champigny, M., 184. 

Champlain, Samuel de, 16 ; portrait of, 127 ; 
his journals, 128 ; his residence (figured), 
130; his musketry (figured), 132; his cam- 
paign with the Iroquois, 134; also, 141, 143, 
151, 172, 181, 183, 210. 

Champlin, Miss, 290. 

Charlemagne, Emperor, 29. 

Charles I., 147. 

Charles II., 178, 212, 213, 217. 

Charlesfort, near Beaufort, S. C, 116. 

Charleston, S. C, 263. 

Charlestown, Mass., settled, 162. 

Charlevoix, P. F. X., 182. 

Charlotte, Queen, 339. 

Charter of Virginia, 141 ; of Maryland, 165 ; 
of Connecticut, 219; of Massachusetts, 221 ; 
colonial charters annulled, 222. 

Chastellux, Marquis de, 324, 325. 

Chatham, Earl of, 229, 288. 

Chesapeake, the, 356. 

Chesterton, England, mill at, 43. 

Chicago, 111., 388, 413, 415. 

Chichen-Itza, 21. 

Choiseul, Due de, 241. 

Cholula, pyramid of, 13. 

Chopunish Indians, ir. 

Christiana, Del., foundation of, 167. 

Christina, Queen, 167. 

Christopher, St., 59. 

Church, Captain Benjamin, 173, 178. 

Cicero, 195. 

Cincinnati, O., 388. 

Circleville, O., 15. 

Circumnavigation of globe by Drake, 96 ; by 
Cavendish, loi. 

Civil offices, tenure of service in, 402 ; appoint- 
ments to, 442 ; also, 321, 322, 350, 429. 

Clark, General William, 350. 

Clavigero, Francisco, 11. 

Clay, Henry, portrait of, 391 ; candidate for 
Presidency, 427, 428, 451; quotation from, 
438 ; compromise tariff of, 450 ; also, 362, 

365, 390. 393, 398, 439. 440. 
Clinton, De Witt, 374, 420. 
Clinton, George, 355, 358. 



Clinton, Sir Henry, 253. 

Cobbett, William, 366. 

Colden, Governor Cadvvallader, 181. 

Coleridge, S. T., 73. 

Collingwood, Lord, 366. 

Colonies, French Protestant, 115, 116, 118, 120; 
Lane's, Granville's, White's, 138 ; Gosnold's, 
140; Popham's, 141, 154; Virginia, 141, 146 ; 
Dutch, 151 ; Plymouth, 153 ; Massachusetts, 
161 ; Connecticut, 164 ; in 1630, 165, 168 ; 
in 1650, 165 ; Calvert's, 165 ; Swedish, 167; 
Penn's, 213 ; in 1700, 213 ; union of, 222. 

Columbus, Christopher, his voyage as compared 
with that of the Northmen, 51 ; his training, 
52 ; portrait of, 53 ; his reasonings, 54 ; his 
voyage, 55 ; his delusions, 56; his vision (fig- 
ured, from De Bry), 57; his landing (figured, 
after Turner), 61; landfall, 62 ; his treatment 
of natives, 63 ; his influence on the Cabots, 
78 ; also, 64, 65, 66, 70, 74, 76, 82, 85, 109, 
123. 

Columbus, Ferdinand, 55. 

Commerce, Jefferson's opposition to, 358, 373 ; 
ruin of American, 355, 373. 

Commissioners, Royal, in Boston, 217. 

Comogre, 69. 

Conant, Roger, 161. 

Confederacy, New England, 222. 

Confederation, experiments at, 222 ; formation 

. and failure, 295. 

Congress, Continental, a single house, 296 ; 
manners in, 365 ; records of, 265 ; early 
resolutions, 267 ; discussions in, 268, 272, 

273- 

Connecticut : colonies, 164 ; education in, 201 ; 
witchcraft in, 207 ; charter of, 219 ; Conti- 
nental troops in, 292. 

Constellation, the frigate, 342. 

Constitution, discussion and formation of, 304. 

Constitution and Gnerriere, battle of, 374. 

Continental Congress. (See Congress.) 

Cooper, J. Fenimore, 400, 421. 

Copper-mines, early Indian, 130. 

Cornwallis, Earl of, 285, 291. 

Coronado, Francisco de, lo. 

Cortez, Hernando de, 9, 10, 11, 17, 72, 73. 

Costume, changes of, 348. 

Coverley, Sir Roger de, an American, 348. 

Crawford, William H., 389, 398, 402, 427, 428, 
439, 442. 

Creasy, Sir Edward, 287. 

Creek Indians, 12. 

Croatoan, 139. 

Cromwell, Oliver, 216. 



460 



INDEX. 



Cromwell, Richard, 217. 
Cudraigny, an Indian god, 112. 
Cullenden, Rose, 207. 
"Cumberland Road" bill, 404. 
Custis, Nelly, 328. 
Cutler, Dr. Manasseh, 310. 
Cutts, Mrs., 376. 

D. 

Dane, Nathan, 306. 

Danes, the, 34. 

Danish Society of Antiquarians, 45. 

Darby, William, 413, 415. 

Dare, Ananias, 139. 

Dare, Virginia, 140. 

Darien, 68, 69. 

Darwin, Charles, 4, 20. 

D'Avezac, M., 77. 

Davis, Captain Isaac, 245. 

Davis, Isaac P., 373. 

Davis, John, 344. 

Deane, Charles, 77, 82, 219. 

De Bry's imaginary monsters, 57. 

Decatur, Commodore Stephen, 358. 

Declaration of Independence, 273, 274, 280. 

Deerfield, Mass., massacre at, 185. 

Delaware, Lord, 149, 167. 

Delaware settled, 167 ; connection with Penn- 
sylvania, 213, 225. 

Delft Haven, 154. 

Democratic party, first called Republican, 336; 
triumph of, 343 ; material of, 351 ; long in 
power, 360 ; change in doctrines, 380. 

Dennie, T. G., his Portfolio, 343 ; attack on 
Jefferson, 344. 

Denonville, M., 184. 

Dexter, F. B., 202. 

Diaz, Bernal, 11, 108. 

Dickens, Charles, 311. 

Dickinson, John, quoted, 226; speech of, 271; 
also, 268, 270, 272, 277. 

Dighton Rock, the, 42 ; figured, 45. 

Diman, Professor, 202. 

Donelson, Mrs., 448. 

Dorchester Company, the, 161. 

Dorchester, Mass., settled, 162. 

Doringh, C. H. R., 44. 

" Downing, Jack," 433. 

Downing, Sir George, 193. 

Drake, Sir Francis, portrait of, 91 ; maps of, 
95 ; attack on San Domingo (figured), 99 ; 
also, 90, 92, 94, 96, 98, 100, loi, 104, 138. 

Ducket, Lionel, 85. 

Duelling at Washington, 364. 



Duny, Anne, 207. 

Dustin, Hannah, 173. 

Dutch in America, the, 151, 168, 2II. 

Dutch West India Company, 152. 

Dwight, Rev. Timothy, 398. 



" Eastward, Ho !" quoted, 146. 

Eaton, Mrs., 448. 

Education in the colonies, 201. 

Edwards, Dr. Enoch, 281. 

El Dorado, 105. 

Elephant Mound, the, 26. 

Elephant Pipe, the, 26. 

Eliot, Rev. John, 126, 194, 195, 253. 

Elizabeth, Queen, Raleigh's tribute to, 107 ; 

also, 84, 88, 9CJ, 96, 107. 
Ellery, William, quoted, 282 ; also, 284, 306. 
Ellis, Dr. George E., quoted, 126, 171, 174. 
Embargo, the, 356 ; Bryant's poem against it, 

356. 
Emerson, R. W., quoted, 384. 
Emerson, Rev. William, quoted, 257. 
Endicott, John, portrait of, 161 ; also, 162, 164, 

195, 218. 
England. (See Great Britain.) 
English nation, an, predicted by Raleigh, 137. 
Englishmen in America, second generation of, 

192. 
Erik the Red, 36, 41. 
Eskimo, 23. 

Eustis, Dr. William, 247. 
Everett, Edward, 399, 400, 401. 
Everett, Dr. William, quoted, 48. 
Ewaiponima, an imaginary race, 106. 
Excommunication of Fletcher by Drake, 100. 



Fauchet, Baron, 331. 

Federalists, their inconsistency, 369 ; their de- 
fence of the right of search, 370; their decline, 
355. 362 ; partisanship, 371 ; their provoca- 
tions, 372. 

Ferdinand, King of Spain, 55, 62, 63, 78. 

Fernow, Berthold, 151, 152. 

Fersen, Count, 335. 

Fielding, Henry, 265. 

Finance, American, established by Hamilton, 
320. 

" First" and "Second" Virginia colonies, 141. 

Flag, the American, 291. 

Fletcher, Rev. Francis, 93, 100. 

Flint, Timothy, 414, 415, 419. 

Flora, American, transformed, 217. 



INDEX. 



461 



Florida, mounds of, 15 ; origin of name of, 71 ; 
purchase of, 390. 

Floyd, John, 451. 

Forrest, Mrs., 149. 

Fort Caroline, Florida, 116, 117. 

Fort Moultrie, defence of, 263. 

Foster, J. W., cited, 14. 

Fountain of Youth, search for the, 70. 

Fox, Captain, 62. 

Fox, Charles James, 288. 

France, policy of, towards Indians, 124, 132 ; 
discoveries of, 182 ; activity of, 189 ; claims 
surrendered, 191 ; first treaty with, 287 ; army 
of, in America, 289 ; influence of, on Amer- 
ica, 328, 333; X, Y, Z negotiations, 341. 

Francis I., 109. 

Franklin, Benjamin, quoted, 241, 279, 304; let- 
ter to, 294 ; his political theory, 305 ; also, 
224, 265, 268, 270, 274, 275, 287, 298, 305. 

Franks, Rebecca, 323, 324. 

Freedom, religious, in Rhode Island and Mary- 
land, 199. 

French and Indian wars, 132. 

French Revolution : influence upon Americans, 
328, 329 ; influence on party lines, 333. 

Freneau, Philip, 329, 398. 

Freydis, a Norse woman, 40. 

Frobisher, Captain Martin, 97, 98. 

Frontenac, Comte de, 124, 184. 

Frost, Mr., 234. 

Frothingham, Richard, quoted, 243 ; also, 256, 
269. 

Fulton, Robert, 420. 



Gage, General Thomas, 254, 267. 

Gallatin, Albert, 335, 374, 389, 437. 

Gamier, Pere, 125. 

Garrison, W. L., 454. 

Gates, General Horatio, 287. 

Genet, E. C, 329, 330, 331. 

George III., King, 288. 

Georgia, mounds of, 15; settlement of, 233 

Continental troops of, 292. 
Germantown, Pa., battle of, 286. 
Gerry, Elbridge, 279, 299, 304, 321, 374. 
Gilbert, Raleigh, 142. 
Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 97. 
Gilman, D. C, cited, 389, 403. 
Gleig, Rev. G. R., 361. 
Globe of Schoner (figured), 67. 
Gomara, F. L. de, 11, 82. 
Goodrich, A., 64. 
Goodrich, James, speech of, 3S8. 



Goodrich, S. G., cited, 400. 

Gorges, Sir F., 141, 143. 

Gorton, Samuel, 199. 

Gosnold, Bartholomew, 140, 146, 148, 154. 

Gougou, an Indian monster, 131, 210. 

Gourgues, Dominique de (figured), 120; also, 
119. 

Gouverneur, Mrs., 395. 

Governor Shirley's War, 187. 

Grant, Mrs., of Laggan, 238. 

Gravier, M., 49. 

Gray, Dr. Asa, 24. 

Great Britain : explorations from, 76 ; seamen 
of, 84 ; wars, of, with Spain, 88 ; claims of 
discovery, 97 ; early colonies of, 138 ; wars 
with France, 169 ; with Indians, 172 ; love 
of colonists for, 216; love changed into ha- 
tred, 217; aggressions of, 217; official igno- 
rance in, 223 ; feeling in, towards colonies, 
223 ; outbreak of war, 241 ; peace negotia- 
tions with, 292; Jay's treaty with, 331; new 
aggressions of, 355; second war with, 360; 
treaty of Ghent with, 378. 

Greene, George W., 109. 

Greene, General Nathaniel, 284, 291. 

Greenland, 36, 46, 48, 50, 51. 

Grenville, Sir Richard, 138. 

Grimalfson, Bjarni, 31. 

Griswold, R. W. , 324. 

Grundy, Lewis, 362, 365. 

Guiana, 105. 

Gun-boats, Jeff'erson's, 356, 373. 

Gutierrez, Pedro, 6r. 

H. 

Hackit, Thomas, 1 16. 

Hakluyt, Richard, 85, 96, 109, 138. 

Hale, John P., 384. 

Hale, Sir Matthew, quoted, 207. 

Hall, Bishop, quoted, 153, 207. 

Halleck, F. G., quoted, 394. 

Hallowell, R. C, 204. 

Hamilton, Alexander, financial achievements 
of, 320 ; quoted, 331 ; quarrel with Adams, 
343; death of, 355; also, 312, 316, 319, 326, 
330, 333. 340, 342, 343. 350, 355, 361, 382. 

Hamilton, Mrs., 312. 

Hancock, John, quoted, 279; letter to, 285; 
also, 254, 259, 277. 

Hannibal, 70. 

Harold, King, 30, 34. 

Harris, Captain, 254. 

Harrison, Benjamin, quoted, 279. 

Harrison, General W. H., 375. 



462 



INDEX. 



Harrisse, H., 62. 

Hartford Convention, the, 372. 

Hartop, Job, 104, 143. 

Harvard, Rev. John, 194. 

Haven, S. F., quoted, 22. 

Hawkes, Henry, 105. 

Hawkins, Sir John, portrait of, 86 ; arms of, 

88 ; also, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 96, 103, 104, 

118. 
Hawthorne, N., quoted, 192; also, 187, 400. 
Hay, Mrs., 395. 
Hazard, Isaac Peace, 237. 
Hazard, Robert, 237. 
Heath, General Benjamin, 249. 
" Heimskringla," the, quoted, 30. 
Helluland, 38, 50. 
Henrietta Maria, Queen, 165. 
Henry IV. (of France), 128. 
Henry VI. (of England), 88. 
Henry VII. (of England), 78, 80, 81, 84. 
Henry, Miss, 422. 

Henry, Patrick, 229, 231, 29S, 300, 304. 
Heriulf, 37. 

Herrera, T. A., quoted, 58, 59, 60, 61, 72. 
Higginson, Rev. Francis, quoted, 162, 163, 197 ; 

also, 195. 
Hochelaga (Montreal), in, 112. 
Hodenosote (Iroquois house), 12, 14. 
Hoist, Dr. Von, 299. 
Homer, 194, 195. 

Hooke, Rev. William, quoted, 216, 231. 
Hooker, Rev. Thomas, quoted, 220 ; also, 195. 
Hop, 39, 48. 
Hopkins, Stephen, 227. 
Hopkinson, Francis, 266. 
Horace, 194. 

Howe, Sir William, 253, 256, 281, 282, 285. 
Howell, James, 48, 207. 
Hovvells.'w. D., 349. 
Hubbard, Rev. William, 176. 
Hudson, Henry, 143, 151, 152. 
Huguenot colonies, French, 115, 116, 118, 120. 
Hull, Commodore Isaac, 398. 
Hull, General William, 374. 
Humboldt, Alexander von, 58, 62. 
Humphreys, David, 398. 
Hundred Years' War, the, 169. 
Hutchinson, Mrs. Anne, 199. 
Hutchinson, Governor Thomas, quoted, 158 ; 
also, 162, 259. 



Iceland, Northmen in, 36 ; visited by Colum- 
bus, 53 ; also, 50, 51, 52. 



Ignorance of English officials, 223. 

Illinois admitted as a State, 393 ; unsettled, 
407, 416 ; settled, 417. 

Impressment of seamen (figured), 367. 

Independence, American, early feeling about, 
266, 267 ; dawning of, 241 ; war for, 242 ; sec- 
ond war for, 360. (See Revolutionary War.) 

Indiana admitted as a State, 393 ; unsettled, 
416 ; settled, 417. 

Indians, American, families of, 4 ; mounds 
built by, 16 ; inscriptions made by (figured), 
44, 46 ; ill-treatment of, 109 ; of Florida (fig- 
ured), 117, 118 ; their superstitions, 131 ; their 
warfare (figured), 134; found gentle by first 
explorers, 169 ; how treated by English, 170, 
178; by French and Spanish, 122, 182; by 
Dutch, 180; purchases from, 170; sentiments 
of Puritans towards, 171, 175 ; warfare of, in- 
fluenced by English, 132, 133, 172; its influ- 
ence on that of colonists, 173 ; position of 
women among, 176 ; vvomen at first respected 
by, 177 ; outbreaks encouraged by French, 
184; converted by Rasle, 186 ; their opinion 
of colonists, 189 ; later wars with, 327. 

Institutions, American, origin of, 214. 

Interglacial period, man in, 25. 

Internal improvements, 404, 406, 411, 418, 420. 

Intolerance in Maryland, 200; in Virginia, 202 ; 
in Massachusetts, 203. 

Iroquois Indians, 12, 13, 132, 134, 183. 

Irving, Washington, 62, 64, 400, 402. 

Isabella, Queen, 55, 62, 78. 

Italy, influence of, on American discovery, 76. 

J- 

Jackson, Andrew : his character, 432 ; causes 
of his popularity, 432 ; Webster's fears of, 
434 ; popular views of, 434; portrait of, 435 ; 
early career of, 437 ; " reign" of, 438 ; first 
election of, 440 ; Jefferson's distrust of, 441 ; 
political changes made by, 442 ; Sullivan's 
opinion of, 442 ; inauguration of, 444 ; man- 
ners of, 444 ; his contest with Washington 
ladies, 448 ; his dealing with nullification, 
450; his re-election, 451; his contest with 
the United States Bank, 452 ; also, 239, 396. 

Jackson, Mrs. Helen, description of pueblo, 7. 

Jackson, Dr. W. H., 6. 

James II., 183. 

Japanese and American flora, 24 ; junks cross- 
ing the Pacific, 23, 24. 

Jasper, Sergeant, 263. 

Jay, Chief -justice John, treaty of, 328, 331 ; 
also, 324, 333, 340, 343, 355> 36i- 



')■ 



INDEX. 



463 



Jay, Mrs. John, 312. 

Jefferson, Thomas : his election as Vice-presi- 
dent, 332 ; his feeling as to French Revolu- 
tion, 334, 335 ; his election as President, 343; 
his portrait, 345 ; his inauguration, 346 ; at- 
tack on, in Port/olio, 347 ; charges against, 
347 ; his house-keeping, 349 ; his re-election, 
355 ; his view of townships, 357 ; his char- 
acter, 358 ; his friendship with Adams, 359 ; 
his successors, 360 ; his aversion to commerce, 
373 ; also, 234. 

Jeffrey, Lord, 400. 

Jemison, Mary, 177. 

Jesuit Missions, 122, 125, 127. 

Johnson, William, 434. 

Johnston, Lady. (See Franks, Rebecca.) 

Jones, Captain Paul, 291. 

Juvenal, 194. 

K. 
Kalm, Peter, 224. 
Karlsefne, 39, 41. 
Kendall, Amos, 452. 
Kendall, John, 147. 
Kenton, Simon, 421. 
Kentucky, resolutions of 1799, 343 ; admitted 

as a State, 353 ; early life in, 327, 421. 
Kialarness, 39. 

Kieft, Governor Jacob, 167, 180. 
King, Clarence, 415. 

" King Henry VI.," play of, quoted, 88. 
King Philip's War, 176. 
King, Rufus, portrait of, 401; also, 306, 355, 

380, 383. 
King William's War, 183. 
Kinglake, A. W., 254. 
King's Arms, tearing down of, in Philadelphia 

(figured), 281. 
Kingsley, Charles, 92, 
Kinney, Mr., 52. 
Kirke, Colonel, 220. 
Knox, General, letters from, 297, 304 ; also, 

302, 310, 312, 328, 332, 395. 
Knox, Mrs. General, 310, 312, 323. 
Kohl, J. G., 77, 143. 
Kortwright, Miss, 395. 
Krossaness, 39. 
Krudener, Baron, 449. 
Kuhn, Dr., 424. 

L. 

Lafayette, G. M. de (Marquis), 283, 286, 287, 

334- 
La Hontan, Baron, quoted, 172, 183, 185. 



Landa, D. de, 19; alphabet, 18. 

Lane, Ralph, 138. 

Langbourne, Major, 240. 

Lapham, L A., cited, 26. 

La Roche, De, 121. 

La Salle, Robert C. de, 181. 

Laudonniere, Rene de, 88, 116. 

Las Casas, Bishop de, his protest against cruel- 
ty, 74 ; also, 123. 

Lauzun, Due de, 289, 335. 

Lawrence, Captain James, 375. 

Lawyers, rise of, in colonies, 239. 

Laydon, John, 149. 

League of four colonies, 177. 

Le Caron, Pere, 123. 

Lee, Ann, 199. 

Lee family (Marblehead, Mass.), 238. 

Lee, General Charles, 257. 

Lee, Richard Henry, 227, 267, 268, 305 ; son 
of, 267. 

Leif the Lucky, 38 ; his booths, 38, 39. 

Leifsbudir, 39. 

Leighton, Caroline C, 415. 

Leisler, Jacob, 222. 

Le Jeune, Pere, 125. 

Le Moyne, 116, 117, 119. 

Leon, Ponce de, portrait of, 71 ; his voyage, 
71 ; also, 143. 

Le Plongeon, Dr., 2. 

Lescarbot, 125. 

Leverett, Governor John, courageous reply of, 
217. 

Lewis and Clark's expedition, 11, 350. 

Lewis, Meriwether, 350. 

Lewis, William B., 439. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 327. 

Lincoln, Governor Levi, 444. 

Livingston, Cora, 422. 

Livingston, Edward, 450. 

Livingston, Robert R., 268, 274, 275, 308, 407. 

Livingston, the brothers, 227. 

Locke, John, his singular plan of government, 
212. 

Lodge, H. C, quoted, 162. 

Lodge, Thomas, 85. 

Longfellow, H. W., quoted, 97 ; also, 236, 400. 

Long Island, battle of, 284. 

Lorges, Roselly de, 64. 

Lossing, B. J., 376. 

Louis XV., 223. 

Louisburg, capture of, 187, 223. 

Louisiana, purchase of, 354, 407 ; admitted as 
a State, 379. 

Loundes, William J., 379. 



464 



INDEX. 



Lovewell, Captain John, 174. 
Lowell, John, 369, 371. 
Lubbock, Sir J., 25. 
Lundy's Lane, battle at, 377. 

M. 

Macaulay, Lord, 20I. 

Macon, Nathaniel, 350. 

McDuffie, George, 424. 

McKean, Thomas, recoll'ections of, 276 ; letter 

from, 277; also, 278, 314. 
Madison, James : his election as President, 

358 ; his appearance, 361 ; his portrait, 363 ; 

Federalist charges against, 371 ; his aversion 

to war, 371 ; close of his administration, 

379- 

Madison, Mrs. James, 361, 362, 365, 395. 

Magellan, Ferdinand de, 70. 

Magnus, King, 35. 

Mail-service, 404, 405. 

Maine, forts in, 184; Indian wars in, 186 ; ad- 
mitted as a State, 393. 

Maine Historical Society, 50. 

Major, R. H., 77. 

Malbone, Godfrey, 238. 

Mammoth on ivory, 25. 

Man in Interglacial period, 25. 

Mandan Indians, 12, 15. 

Manhattan Island, 152, 170. 

Manning, Cardinal, 200. 

Manufactures, introduction of, 195. 

Map showing advance of population, 416. 

Maps (figured) : Sigurd Stephanius's, 50 ; Da 
Vinci's, 66 ; Schoner's (globe), 67 ; Cabot's, 
79 ; Drake's, 95 ; Smith's, 145, 148 ; Or- 
telius's, 108. 

Marckland, 38, 50. 

Marietta, O., 15. 

Marion, General Francis, 263. 

Marlborough, Duke of, 186. 

Marquette, Pere, 181. 

Marshall, Chief-justice John, 434. 

Marston, John, quoted, 146. 

Martin, John, 147, 148. 

Martyr, Peter. (See Anghiera.) 

Maryland founded, 165 ; religious freedom in, 
167, 199 ; intolerance in, 200 ; education in, 
201 ; witchcraft in, 208 ; old institutions of, 
215 ; manners in, 235 ; insurrections in, 454. 

Mason, George, 288. 

Mason, Jeremiah, 441. 

Mason, Mr., 387. 

" Massachusettensis," 242. 

Massachusetts Bay Colony founded, 158, 161 ; 



relations with Indians, 170 ; toleration in, 
197 ; education in, 201 ; intolerance in, 205. 

Massachusetts, formed by union with Plymouth, 
213; independent spirit of, 217; charter of, 
vacated, 220; preparations for war in, 144; 
circular of committee, quoted, 249 ; services 
of, in Revolution, 292 ; Shays's insurrection 
in, 302 ; sei-vices of, in war of 1812, 379. 

Massasoit, 172, 175. 

Masts sent by Massachusetts colony to Eng- 
land, 218. 

Mather, Rev. Cotton, portrait of, ig6; fictitious 
letter from, 206 ; quoted, 175, 203, 208, 210 ; 
also, 195, 197, 204. 

Mather, Rev. Increase, quoted, 171, 219. 

Mayas, 2, 4, 17, 19, 63 ; alphabet of, 18, 19; 
sculptures of, 52. 

Mayflower, agreement on the, 156. 

Mechanic arts, introduction of, 195. 

Medford, Mass., settled, 162. 

Membertou, 126. 

Menendez, Pedro, 119, 

Mercator's charts, 56. 

Mercer, General, 327. 

Mermaids, 56. 

Merry, Mr., 347, 349. 

Merry Mount, 164. 

Mexico, ancient, 10, 11, 13, 17 ; modern, 76. 

Miami Indians, the, 327. 

Michael, Emperor, 30. 

Michigan admitted as a State, 453. 

Miller, W. J., 44, 45. 

Mills, Elijah H., 398. 

Milton, John, quoted, 106. 

Minuit, Peter, 152, 167, 170. 

Missouri admitted as a State, 393. 

Missouri Compromise, 393. 

Mitchell, Professor Henry, cited, 49. 

Mobile, Ala., settled, 182. 

Mohave Indians, 12. 

Monocrats, the, 329. 

Monroe doctrine, the, 403. 

Monroe, James, called "James II." by Josiah 
Quincy, 360 ; elected President, 380 ; his ' 
record, 381 ; importance of his tour, 381 ; his 
fear of extended territory, 383 ; his portrait, 
385 ; his character and physique, 384 ; his 
travels, 387 ; his policy, 389 ; his re-election 
all but unanimous, 394 ; American literature 
born under him, 398 ; the Monroe doctrine, 
403 ; his views of the post-office, 404. 

Monroe, Mrs. James, 395. 

Montcalm, General de, portrait of, 190; also, 
189, 191. 



INDEX. 



465 



Montezuma, 4, 11. 

" Montezuma," a nickname for Washington, 

332. 

" Montezuma's Dinner," Morgan's essay on, 4. 

Montgomery, General James, 263. 

Montreal captured, 191. 

Monts, Pierre de, 121, 122, 141. 

Moon, Thomas, 92. 

Morgan, L. H., 11, 13, 17, 21, 23, 456. 

Morris, Gouverneur, 349, 420. 

Morris, Robert, 272. 

Morse, John T., Jr., quoted, 447. 

Morton, Mrs., 291, 326. 

Motte, Lieutenant-colonel, 263. 

Moultrie, General William, 263. 

Mound -builders, the, 2, 15; village of (fig- 
ured), 14. 

Mount Desert first described, 129. 

Mount Hope Bay, 48, 49, 50. 

Moustier, Comte de, 312. 

Mullinger, J. B., 194. 

N. 

Napoleon. (See Bonaparte.) 

Narrowing influence of colonial life, 197. 

Navarrete, M. F. de, 62. 

Navy, United States, first Secretary of, 342 ; 
battles of, 291, 342, 356, 369, 374. 

Nechecolee Indians, 12. 

Neill, E. D., 200. 

Neutral French, the, in Acadia, 189. 

Neuville, M. Hyde de, 396. 

Neuville, Madame de, 397. 

New Amsterdam founded, 152; nationalities in, 
153. 211. 

New England first named, 144 ; colonies of, 
their influence on reviving Virginia colony, 
158, 195. 

Newfoundland, origin of name of, 83. 

New France, Jesuits in, 122 ; also, 108, 182. 

New Hampshire settled, 174, 184; independ- 
ence of, 213 ; buildings in, 233. 

Newhouse, Sewall, 414. 

New Jersey settled, 152 ; independence of, 213 ; 
campaigns in, 284. 

New Mexico, pueblos of, 19 ; Indian inscrip- 
tions in, 44, 46. 

New Netherlands, name changed, 165 ; surren- 
der to English, 181, 211. 

New Orleans, battle of, 377, 438. 

New Plymouth. (See Plymouth.) 

Newport, Captain Christopher, 146. 

Newport, R. I., old mill at, 42 ; figured, 43 ; 
French in, 289. 



New York (city), harbor of, 144 ; first seat of 
government, 309; society in, 310; also, see 
New Amsterdam. 

New York, originally New Netherlands, 152, 
165, 168, 181 ; governor of, quoted, 181 ; 
transferred to English, 211; revolt of, against 
Andros, 222 ; British army in, 260, 263 ; pop- 
ulation of, in 1817, 388. 

Nez Perce Indians, 11. 

Nicholls, Mr., 8r. 

Nichols, B. R., 407. 

Nicolls, General, 211. 

Nixon, John, 280. 

Niza, Fray Marco de, 10. 

North Carolina colonized, gS ; divided from 
South Carolina, 213 ; plans a fleet, 300; in- 
surrections in, 454. 

North, Lord, 288. 

Northern colonies, condition of labor in, 239. 

Northmen, their lineage, 28 ; their habits, 28 ; 
their jewellery, 29 ; their heroism, 30 ; their 
. ships described, 31 ; their ships (figured), 27, 
32 ; dress of, 35 ; precise topography of, un- 
known, 46 ; no authentic remains of, 46. 

North-west Territory, 306. 

Nova Scotia, Northmen in, 48. 

Nunez, Alvar (Cabeza de Vaca), his voyage, 72 ; 
also, 10, 181. 

Nunez, Vasco (Balboa), portrait of, 68 ; his dis- 
covery of Pacific Ocean, 69. 

O. 

Oglethorpe, General James, 225. 

Ohio, mounds of, 2, 15, 17, 19; Company, the, 

307 ; admitted as a State, 354. 
Ohio River, early life on, 419. 
Old English seamen, the, 75. 
Old French War, the, 189. 
Old mill at Newport, 42 ; figured, 43 ; the same 

at Chesterton, England, 43 ; figured, 44. 
O'Neil, Peggy. (See Eaton, Mrs.) 
Onondaga Indians, 16. 
"Orders in Council," British, 355, 365. 
Ordinance of 1787, 306. 
Orinoco, the river, lOO. 
Ortelius, maps (figured), loS. 
Osceola, 453. 
Osgood, J. R., 116. 
Ossoli, Margaret Fuller, 415. 
Otis, C. P., 128. 
Otis, H. G., 388. 
Otis, James, quoted, 223; portrait of, 223; also, 

229, 352. 
Otto, M., 297, 313. 



31 



466 



INDEX. 



Ovid, 195. 

Oxenstiern, Chancellor, 167. 



Pacific Ocean, seen by Balboa, 69 ; by Drake, 

91- 
Page, John, 321. 
Paine, Robert Treat, 326, 342. 
Paine, Thomas, 270, 271, 399. 
Palfrey, J. G., 43. 
Parish, Rev. Daniel, 370. 
Parker, Captain, 245. 
Parker, Professor Joel, 240. 
Parkman, Francis, quoted, 121, 125, 181, 198; 

cited, 119, 126; not quite just to the Puri- 
tans, 198. 
Parties, enmity between, 371 ; changes in, 379, 

390; disappearance of, 439. 
Parton, James, 275, 278, 360, 437. • 
Pasqualigo, Lorenzo, 80, 81. 
Peace of Paris, 169, 191 ; of Ryswick, 185 ; of 

Utrecht, 186. 
Penn, William, his arrival, 213 ; his relations 

with Indians, 213; also, 174, 213, 222. 
Pennsylvania, settlement of, 213; relations of 

Delaware with, 213, 225; society in, 282, 323; 

campaigns in, 286 ; but one legislative body 

in, 298. 
Pentucket (Haverhill) attacked, 185. 
Pepperrell, Sir William, 187 ; portrait of, 188. 
Pequot War, the, 169, 175. 
Percy, Lord, 247, 248. 
Perez, Juan, 71. 
Perkins, J. H., 422. 
Perry, Commodore O. H., 375. 
Peter Martyr, 11, 59. 
Peter, Mrs., 422. 
Peters, Dr., 202. 
Peters, John, 238. 
Peyster, Mr. De, 376. 
Philadelphia, the seat of government, 230, 322 ; 

life in, 323, 324, 325 ; population of, in 1817, 

388. 
Philip II. of Spain, 85, 87, 88, 90, 104. 
Philip, King (Indian), death of (figured), 179 ; 

also, 169, 170, 171, 176, 178, 180, 183, 21S. 
Philoponus, 57. 
Phips, Sir William, 185, 187. 
Physique of Americans changed, 217. 
Pickering, Timothy, 306, 369. 
Pierria, Albert de la, 116. 
Pilgrims (Plymouth), landing of, 158 ; visit to 

shore (figured), 159. 
" Pilgrims of St. Mary's," the, 165. 



Pinckney, Charles C, 320, 342, 343, 355, 358. 

Pinkney, William, 374. 

Pioneers, early frontier, 421. 

Pitcairn, General, 245. 

Pitt, William, 191, 241, 242. 

Pizarro, Francisco, 70, 73. 

Plastowe, Josias, 170. 

Pliny, 194. 

Plutarch, 194. 

Plymouth colony founded, 153 ; compact of, 
156 ; relations of, with Indians, 170, 175 ; tol- 
eration in, 197; merged in Massachusetts, 213. 

Pocahontas, 143. 

Point Comfort first named, 147. 

Polo, Marco, 55. 

Pont-Grave, M. de, 128. 

Pontiac, conspiracy of, 19I. 

Poole, W. F., 207, 209. 

Poor, General Enoch, 253. 

Popham colony, the, 141, 154. 

Popham, George, 142. 

Popham, Sir John, 141, 142. 

Population : of colonies, 225 ; of New York in 
1787, 309; of cities in 1817, 388; increase in, 
406; Madison's estimate of, 322; advance of, 
414, 415; of United States in 1830, 453. 

Port Bill, Boston, 229. 

Port Royal, N. S., taken, 185. 

Port Royal Harbor (S. C.) first described, 116. 

"Portia." (See Adams, Abigail.) 

Portugal and Spain, possessions of, in the New 
World, 75, 108. 

Pott, Dr., 202. 

Potter, Elisha, 423. 

Powhatan (figured), 144 ; also, 139, 143. 

Preble, Judge, 441. 

Prescott, General, 259. 

Prescott, W. H., 4. 

Prideaux, General John, 191. 

Princeton, defeat of Cornwallis at, 285. 

Pring, Martin, 140, 141. 

Printz, John, 168. 

Protestant colonies, French, 115, 116, 118, 120. 

Provincial life introduced, 220, 222. 

Ptolemy, 66. 

Public men usually criticised with justice, 442. 

Pueblos, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12. (Special) Acoma, 
8 ; Bonito, 6 ; Chacos, 19 ; High Bank, 17 ; 
Hungo Pavie (figured), 5, 6; Moqui, 10; 
Pintado (figured), 2, 3 ; San Juan, 7 ; Taos 
(figured), 8 ; Zuni, 8. 

Pulaski, Count, 286. 

Puritans, numbers of, 164 ; sacrifices of, 192 ; 
ballads concerning, 193; out-door life of, 193; 



INDEX. 



467 



social and educational character, 194; amuse- 
ments of, 195 ; injustice done to, 198; pro- 
portion of educated men, 202. 

Putnam, F. W., 5, 15. 

Putnam, General Israel, 252, 259, 284. 

Putnam, General Rufus, 306. 

Q. 

Quakers, the, in Rhode Island, igg ; in Mary- 
land and Virginia, 202 ; in Massachusetts, 
204 ; objections to, 204 ; defences of, 204 ; 
exhorter (figured), 205. 

Quebec, unsuccessful siege of, 185; fall of, 191. 

Queen Anne's War, 185. 

Quincy, Josiah (Member of Congress), 311, 360, 
362, 365, 380. 

Quincy, Josiah (junior), recollections of, 422, 
444, 447 ; also, 423. 

Quincy, Mrs. Josiah (senior), 234, 288, 291, 349, 
361, 362, 373„ 402. 

R. 

Rafn, Professor, 28, 41, 42, 43, 47, 48, 49, 51. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 97, 98, loi, 104, 105, 106, 
137, 138, 140, 141, 143, 158, 16S. 

Raleigh, Va., 138. 

Ramusio, 109. 

Randolph, Edmund, 331. 

Randolph, Edward, 183, 218, 223. 

Randolph, John, picture of, 397 ; character of, 
398; quoted, 454; also, 312, 336, 393, 396, 
428. 

Randolph, Miss, 398. 

Rask, Professor, 48. 

Rasle, Pere (Father), fac-simile from his glos- 
sary, 186 ; also, 174, 186. 

Ratcliffe, John, 146, 148. 

Reed, General Joseph, 264, 272, 285, 

Republican government, distrust of, 293, 352. 

Republican party. (See Democratic party.) 

Revere, Paul, 244. 

Revolutionary War, battles in, at Lexington, 
245 ; of Concord, 245 ; taking of Ticonderoga, 
251; of Bunker Hill, 256; at Quebec, 263; 
defence of Fort Moultrie, 263 ; at Long Isl- 
and, 284 ; at Fort Washington, 284 ; at Tren- 
ton, 285 ; at Princeton, 285 ; at Brandywine, 
286 ; at Germantown, 286 ; at Bennington. 
287; at Saratoga, 287; at Yorktown, 291; of 
General Greene, 291; statistics of war, 244, 
285, 292, 293. 

Rhode Island, purchase of, 171 ; toleration in, 
199 ; education in, 201 ; French army in, 
289. 



Ribaut, Jean, his landing, figured, 115; also, 

117, 118, 140, 211. 
Richmond, Duke of, 288. 
Riedesel, Baroness, 238. 
Riedesel, General, 239. 
Right of search, British, 355, 366. 
Roads and canals, opening of, 411, 417, 420. 
Robinson, John, 154, 156. 
Robinson, Rowland, 237. 
Rochambeau, Comte de, 291, 322. 
Rochester, N. Y., 415. 
Rodney, Cassar, 272, 276, 277. 
Rogers, Samuel, 62. 
Rolfe, John, 149. 
Ross, General, 375, 376, 377. 
Roxbury, Mass., settled, 162. 
Rule, Margaret, 21O. 
Rupert, Prince, 256. 
Rush, Richard, 412, 441. 
Russell, Mrs. Jonathan, 397. 
Rutledge, Edward, 268, 273. 



Sac Indians, 12. 

Sagadehoc River (Kennebec), 141. 

Saguenay, iii. 

St. Asaph's, Bishop of, 283. 

St. Augustine, Fla., 119. 

St. Castin's War, 183. 

St. Clair, General, 327. 

St. John, Henry (Viscount Bolingbroke), 186. 

St. John's River explored, 116. 

St. Lawrence River explored by Cartier, 108, 

no. 
St. Louis, Mo., 388. 
St. Simon's Island, Ga., i. 
Salem, Mass., settlement of, 161 ; witchcraft 

at, 208 ; old usages of, 214. 
Sallust, 194. 
Sanchez, Roderigo, 61. 
Sanctuaiy, land of the, 167. 
San Francisco, Cal., 96. 
San Juan de Ulloa, sea-fight at (figured), 89. 
Santander, Dr. Pedro, 122. 
Saratoga, N. Y., victory at, 287; surrender 

of Burgoyne at, 287. 
Sardinian impressions of Columbus, 52. 
Sargasso Sea, the, 58. 
Sassafras, trade in, 140. 
Savonarola, Girolamo, 199. 
Scalps taken by English, 173. 
Schenectady, Indian massacre at, 184 ; also, 

413- 
Schoner, Johann, globe of, 67. 



468 



INDEX. 



Schuyler, General Philip, 259. 

Schuyler mansion at Albany, 238. 

Scientific surveys, 418. 

Scott, General Winfield, 450. 

Seamen, old English, 75. 

Sea of Darkness, the, 56. 

Second generation in America, the, 192. 

Sedgwick, Catharine, 350. 

Sedgwick, Mrs. Theodore, 323. 

Selectmen, origin of, 240. 

Seminole War, 453. 

Seven Bishops, the, 10. 

Seven Cities, the, 10, 105. 

Sewall, Samuel, portrait of, 208 ; his share in 
witchcraft trials, 208. 

Shakespeare, William, quoted, 88, 106, 252. 

Shays, Daniel, 302, 330. 

Shepard, Rev. Thomas, 195. 

Sherman, Roger, 268, 274, 275. 

Sherwood, Grace, 208. 

Shirley, Governor, 187, 259. 

Sidney, Sir Philip. loi. 

Simpson, Lieutenant J. H., 3, 6, 44. 

Skelton, Rev. John, 162, 195. 

Skraelings, the, 39, 40 ; not Indians, 49. 

Slafter, E. L., 41, 128, 132. 

Slavery first introduced at St. Augustine, 119; 
in Virginia, 144, 240 ; influence of, in North- 
ern colonies, 235, 240; in Southern colonies, 
239; discussion of, 350, 393, 454, 455. 

Slave-trade, the, 85, 87, 88 ; prohibited, 35S. 

Smith, Buckingham, 73. 

Smith, Chief-justice and Mrs., 291. 

Smith, Captain John, portrait of, 142 ; his ro- 
mantic spirit, 143 ; his descriptions, 143 ; his 
map, 144, 145, 148 ; quoted, 138, 147, 150, 
172; cited, 153, 154; also, 139, 143, 145, 147, 
148, 149, 151, 152, 165, 170. 

Smith, Colonel, 244, 247. 

Smith, Samuel H., 347. 

Smith, Sydney, 400, 451. 

Snorri, 40. 

Snorri Sturleson, 30. 

Society, American, manners in, 309, 310, 313, 
314, 349, 361, 362, 395, 396, 397, 422, 423, 
448. 

Soto, F. de, 73, 122, 182. 

South Carolina, separated from North Carolina, 
213; old institutions of, 215; State Constitu- 
tion of, 294 ; nullification in, 450. 

Southcote, Joanna, 199. 

Spain and Portugal, possessions of, in the New 
World, 75, 108. 

Spain, exaggerations of chroniclers of, 11; big- 



otry of, 122, 123; "Requisitions" of, 122; 

cruelty of, 128. 
Spanish Armada, 104. 
Sparke, John, 85. 
Spring Creek, Tenn., 15. 
Squaw sachem, the, 176. 
Squier, E. G., 26. 
Stackelburg, Baron, 423. 
Stadacone (Quebec), 112. 
Stamp Act, the, 228. 
Standish, Miles, 157, 158, 173, 195, 197. 
Stark, General John, 287. 
Starving time, the, 149. 
States Rights doctrines, 316, 380, 408. 
States, union of, 295. 
Steamboats, introduction of, 420. 
Stephanius, Sigufd, 50. 
Stephens, J. L., 4, 12. 
Steuben, Baron, 286. 
Stevenson, Mary, 241. 
Stiles, Rev. Ezra, quoted, 231, 305. 
Stockton, Chief-justice, 269. 
Storrs, W. L., 424. 
Story, Judge Joseph, 372, 434. 
Story, Thomas, defends Quaker nakedness, 205. 
Stoughton, Lieutenant-governor, 164. 
Strachey, William, 139. 

Stuyvesant, Peter, tearing letter (figured), 212. 
Succession, War of the Spanish, 1S5. 
Sullivan, General, 263. 
SuUivan, William, cited, 311, 312, 344; quoted, 

314, 361, 372, 377, 442, 455 ; also, 349. 
Sumner, Charles, 403. 

Sumner, Professor W. G., 239, 439, 442, 453. 
Swedish colony in Delaware, 167, 171, 211. 
Sweinke, his defiance, 35. 
Swift, General Joseph G., 387. 

T. 

Tadoussac, early fur trade at, 121. 

Talleyrand-Perigord, Prince de, 324, 341, 342. 

Taney, Chief-justice Roger B., 452. 

Tariff, the,. 350, 379, 389. 

Taylor, Jeremy, 216. 

Tecumseh, 375. 

Temple, Sir John, 313. 

Tennessee, mounds of, 15; admitted as a State, 

354 ; emigrants to, 413. 
Tennyson, Alfred, quoted, 129. 
Terence, 194, 195. 

Territory, National, increase of, 354, 383. 
Thacher, Oxenbridge, 227, 259. 
Thacher, Rev. Peter, bowling-alley of, 195. 
Thirkill, Launcelot, 82. 



INDEX. 



469 



Thomas, General, 252. 

Thompson, John, 275. 

Thomson, Charles, 277. 

Thornton, Colonel Matthew, 277. 

Thorwald, 38, 51. 

Thorwaldsen, A. B., 40. 

Thury, Pere, 184. 

Ticknor, George, 270. 

Ticonderoga, capture of, 191. 

Titles of the President, 314. 

Tobacco, 151. 

Tompkins, Daniel D., 394. 

Topila, carved face from (figured), 22. 

Torfseus, 41, 48, 50. 

Tory Row, Cambridge, Mass., 238. 

Town government, origin of, 239. 

Tracy, Senator, 324. 

Trades, introduction of, 195. 

Treat, Robert, 222. 

Treaty: of Ryswick, 185 ; of Utrecht, 186; of 

Paris, 292 ; Jay's, 331; with Tripoli, 358 ; of 

Ghent, 378. 
Trenton, surprise of Hessians at, 285. 
Triana, Rodrigo de, 62. 
Tripoli, treaty with, 358. 
Trist, N. P., 451. 
Truxton, Commodore, 342. 
Tudor, William, 256. 

Tunnachemootoolt, village of (figured), 11. 
Turner, J. M. W., 62. 
Turner, Nat., 454. 
Tylor, E. B., 13, 19. 
Tyrker, 38. 

U. 

Underbill, Captain John, 175. 

United States : first organized as a confedera- 
tion, 296 ; becomes a nation, 304 ; Western 
lands of, 306 ; inauguration of government 
of, 308 ; social condition of, 309 ; division of 
parties in, 316, 329, 343 ; appointment of of- 
ficials in, 320; adopts Washington as the seat 
of government, 322 ; early political violence 
in, 328, 332, 351, 371 ; negotiations with 
France, 329, 331. 340 ; treaty with England, 
331; influence of French Revolution on, 333; 
great extension of territory of, 354; war with 
England (1812), 365 ; era of good feeling in, 
381 ; great Western march of population of, 
406 ; early maps of, 412 ; centre of population 
of, 416 ; wars with Indian tribes of, 453 ; rise 
of antislavery agitation in, 453. 

Upham, C. W., 193. 

Usselinx, William, 167. 



Utica, N. Y., 413. 
Uxmal, 12, 19. 



V. 



Valentine, Dr., 19. 

Valley P^orge, revolutionary army at, 286. 

Van Buren, Martin, 398. 

Van Rensselaer, Catherine, 422. 

Varangian guard, the, 29. 

Varnhagen, F. A. de, 64, 65. 

Vassall family, 237, 238. 

Vaughan, Mr., 449. 

Vergennes, M. de, 287, 297. 

Vermont admitted as a State, 353. 

Verrazzano, his letters, 109 ; also, 76, 84, 108, 
no. 

Vespucci, Amerigo, new views concerning, 64, 
65 ; also, 68, 70, 76, 79. 

Vikings, visit of the, 27. 

Villegagnon, M. de, 115. 

Vinci, Leonardo da, 67. 

Vinland, 36, 41, 48, 50 ; not identified, 51. 

Virgil, 195. 

Virginia, settlement of, 138 ; starvation in, 149 ; 
young women emigrants to (figured), 150; In- 
dian massacres in, 175, 178, 190; education 
in, 201; intolerance in, 202; witchcraft in, 
208; House of Burgesses, 239; resolutions 
of 1798, 343; insurrections in, 454. 

Volney, C. F, C, Count de, 325. 

Voltaire, F. M. A. de, 223. 

Von Hoist, Dr., 431, 438. 

Voyageurs, the French, 108, 126, 135. 

W. 

Wadsworth, William, 2ig. 

Waldsee-M tiller, Martin, 65, 66. 

Walker, Sir Hovenden, 186. 

Wampanoag Indians, 44. 

Wamsutta, 176. 

War of 1812, opposition to, 372, 373, 374; bat- 
tles during, 375. 

War : the Hundred Years', 169 ; of the Spanish 
Succession, 185 ; of the Austrian Succession, 
187 ; the Revolutionary (see Revolution) ; the 
Seminole, 453. 

Warbeck, Perkin, 82. 

Ward, General A., 253. 

Wardwell, Lydia, 204. 

Warner, Seth, 252, 253. 

Warren, Dr. Joseph, 247, 248, 249, 250, 254, 
258. 

Warren, General James, 352. 

Warren, Mrs. Mercy, spicy correspondence 
with John Adams, 351; portrait of, 353. 



470 



INDEX. 



Warville, Brissot de, 322. 

Washington City : adopted as the seat of gov- 
ernment, 322 ; British capture of, 376 ; so- 
ciety in, 313, 314, -349, 361, 362, 395, 396, 
397, 422, 423, 448 ; inhabitants of, 39S, 423. 

Washington, George, his portrait (frontispiece); 
his early Western expedition, 189; his report 
on Indian outrages, 190 ; takes command of 
Continental army, 257 ; his opinion of the 
army, 257 ; his views of discipline, 259 ; 
forces evacuation of Boston, 260 ; recognizes 
need of independence, 266 ; his promulga- 
tion of the Declaration of Independence, 
283 ; his victories, 285 ; his anxieties, 285 ; 
despondent at last, 288; his dancing at New- 
port, 290 ; orders cessation of hostilities, 292 ; 
his distrust of the Confederation, 296, 301 ; 
his breakfast with Jefferson, 298 ; his release 
of prisoners from jail, 302 ; letter of Knox 
to, quoted, 304; his inauguration as Presi- 
dent, 308 ; his administration, 309 ; his re- 
ceptions, 313; his cabinet, 315; his re-elec- 
tion, 326; abuse of him, 331, 332; letter of 
Jefferson to, 359; his Farewell Address, 371; 
proposes canals, 420. 

Washington, Mrs. George, 310, 313, 326. 

Watertown, Mass., settled, 162. 

Wayne, Anthony, 327. 

Webb, Dr. T. A., 42, 43. 

Webster, Daniel, quoted, 274, 434, 443, 444; 
portrait of, 445 ; also, 270, 274, 373, 398, 
402, 422, 428, 440, 441. 

Webster, Mrs. Daniel, 422, 423, 424. 

Webster, Ezekiel, 440. 

Weetamo, 176. 

Welch, Dr., 248. 

Welde, Rev. Thomas, 194. 

Wellington, Duke of, 396. 

Wentworth house in Portsmouth, N. H., 238. 

West, Captain, 170. 

Western States, early condition of, 407, 413 ; 
change in, 413. 

Wheatley, Phillis, 326. 

Wheeling, Va., 413. 

Whiskey Insurrection, 330. 

White, Father, 166. 

White, John, 138, 139. 

White, Mrs. Florida, 422. 



White House, early life in, 340, 349, 361, 424. 

White Man's Land, 41. 

Whitney, Professor J. D., 26. 

Whittier, J. G., 204, 205, 400, 402. 

Wilkinson, Jemima, 199. 

William, King, 183, 222. 

Williams, Rev. John, 185. 

Williams, Roger, banishment of, 164 ; purchase 

of Rhode Island by, 171 ; toleration of, 198 ; 

quoted, 199; also, 195, 202. 
Wilson, Deborah, 204. 
Wilson, James, 268. 
Wingate, Paine, 235. 
Wingfield, E. M., 147. 
Winslow, Josiah, quoted, 175 ; also, 170, 176, 

195. 
Winsor, J., " Narrative and Critical History of 

America" quoted, 151. 
Winthrop, Governor John (of Mass.), arrival 

of, 162 ; portrait of, 163 , journal of, cited, 

207; also, 193, 195, 197. 
Winthrop, Governor John (of Connecticut), 185. 
Winthrop, Hannah, 245. 
Wirt, William, 451. 
Wirt, Mrs. William, 422. 
Witch, arrest of a (figured), 209. 
Witchcraft : in Europe, 206 ; in Connecticut, 

207; in Maryland, Virginia, New York, Mas- 
.; sachusetts, 208. 
Witherspoon, Dr., 269. 
Wolcott, Oliver, 313, 329. 
Wolcott, Mrs. Oliver, 323. 
Wolfe, General James, portrait of, 191. 
Wood's Holl, 48. 
Wright, Colonel C. D., 194. 
Wyatt, Hant, 202. 
Wythe, George, 227. 

X. 

X, Y, Z correspondence, 341. 

Y. 

Yeomen of New England described, 239. 
Yucatan, 2, 5, 19, 21; sculptures from (figured), 
21, 22. 

^- 

Zuazo, II. 

Zubly, Rev. J. J., 293. 



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